Lexus RC F

Car and Driver

Tested: two thousand fifteen Lexus RC F

2015 Lexus RC F

• Nov 2014
• By K.C. COLWELL
• Photography By ANDREW TRAHAN

Typically, when full-line car companies set out to develop a coupe, they embark with a sedan from the current lineup, trim two doors, and rewrap the package in a sleeker figure. A shorter wheelbase is optional. Lexus spinned up that memo and burned it before going to work on the RC. Instead, to form its fresh coupe’s structure, Lexus combined the front clip of the GS sedan, the center section of the old IS C convertible, and the rear end of the IS sedan, using adhesives and welding and a fancy mechanism called laser screw welding, which permits for more frequent tacks and thus greater rigidity.

The three-piece treatment makes more sense once it’s explained. The GS front gives engineers the extra track width they dreamed for treating. They deemed the IS rear sufficient to keep the car’s dimensions clean, and the IS C center section necessary for its inherent stiffness and shorter wheelbase. Compared with the current IS sedan, the RC coupe is toughly 1.Five inches longer, broader, and lower, but with a Two.7-inch shorter wheelbase.

The RC F we have here is the hot-rod version of the RC, and the car Lexus is using to effectively substitute its IS F sedan, which does not have an analogue in this fresh IS generation. (Lexus’s hi-po four-door will be the GS F, thicker and likely more expensive than the old M3-baiting IS F.) But the RC F is not attempting to be a direct BMW M-whatever knockoff; it has its own thing going. The snug cockpit swaddles the driver with information and controls in what seems like an adequate techno-modern, Tokyo-by-night design scheme. A high center console features an optional touchpad that is part of the $2840 navigation and up­graded stereo package, and the instruments showcase a morphing LCD center tach, similar to the LFA’s. Almost everything in the car can be adjusted with the haptic infotainment control pad, but there are also redundant buttons with knobs for volume and tuning, just as in the current IS.

The LCD tach switches its appearance inbetween the four drive modes (eco, normal, sport, and sport plus) and is flanked by another screen on the left, which displays tire pressures, radio stations, g-forces, and just about everything else. A smaller analog speedometer lies to the right.

There are few occasions in life when we’d say that four hundred sixty seven horsepower isn’t enough. This is one of them. While the IS F’s old Five.0-liter V-8 got accurately overhauled for this fresh RC F, the car weighs four thousand forty eight pounds, 200-plus more than the old sedan.

Mass is the RC F’s millstone. It has four hundred pounds on a BMW M4 and weighs as much as the four-wheel-drive Audi RS5. In a three-way haul race, the Bimmer walks away, with the F and RS5 keeping rhythm through the quarter-mile. By one hundred thirty mph, the RC F has eked out a almost two-second lead on the RS5. Keep your foot in it and a governor abruptly halts acceleration at one hundred seventy one mph.

With all the data crunched, the RC F proves no quicker than the old IS F. Nor is it slower, tho’. We recorded a Four.3-second zero-to-60 and a quarter-mile time of 12.8 seconds, identical to a two thousand eight IS F. Identical, too, is the naturally aspirated V-8 wail. While muted in the cabin, pedestrians will flinch when the intake’s noise flap opens and the camshaft timing switches the engine’s rumble into a sweaty roar.

Lexus gets credit for adding fifty one horsepower to the V-8 with something more than a software update and without resorting to coerced induction (cough, cough, BMW). Titanium valves, all thirty two of them, along with a lighter crankshaft and con-rods, permitted engineers to lift the redline by five hundred rpm to 7300. Only the 8300-rpm Audi RS5 can rival the F for aural gratification; the M4’s turbocharged and overly enhanced soundtrack is no match. If only the RC F were quicker for it.

More revs equals more power, but it also requires more air and fuel. Thus, the 2UR-GSE, as the V-8 is coded, gets a larger throttle bod and higher-flow fuel injectors. Max power comes at seven thousand one hundred rpm, while the torque peak of three hundred eighty nine pound-feet, up eighteen from the IS F, is available at four thousand eight hundred rpm. That’s four hundred rpm earlier than the old engine. Compression also increases to 12.Trio:1, from 11.8:1.

Enabling the extra power are wider-range cam phasers, providing the V-8 Atkinson-cycle capability. This improves the RC F’s efficiency during cruising and under low explosions and gives the RC F a 2-mpg boost in EPA highway testing over the old IS F, to twenty five mpg. City fuel economy is unchanged at 16. Thirsty, the RC F chugged a gallon of premium every fifteen miles during its stay here.

All the work that went into the structure is apparent from the very first few turns of the wheel. An astonishingly stiff unibody means the cowl never quivers because of the stiff central section’s origin as a convertible. The rigid architecture succinctly telegraphs all communication from the chassis, which is both good and bad. Thrust the front axle past its limit and tire chatter shimmies up the steering column, as it’s supposed to. But a without mercy pitted road sends some shudders to the spines of passengers as well. The car feels as supple as a Lexus ES on a slick road, something the rigid, tense M4 can’t claim.

The F’s seats come stacked with large bolsters in the front buckets, adequate for a car capable of 0.95 g on the skidpad. Considering the Michelin Pilot Super Sports wrapping 19-inch forged BBS wheels, that’s lower than we expected, but the car comes set up with a healthy amount of understeer. Lexus admits that it didn’t want to build an intimidating car. Its purpose was a PG-rated spectacle coupe, joy for all skill levels, and on that it has delivered.

Despite the four drive modes, the steering offers only normal and sport options. The latter, active in sport and sport plus, adds heft but no feedback. Like a stubborn toddler, the wheel communicates clearly only when its diaper is total, when the tires have gone over the edge.

Transmission logic will adapt to a particular driving style, but the eight-speed auto, another IS F carryover, responds to manual inputs without protest. Sturdy 15.0-inch front rotors and 13.6-inch rear rotors do an impeccable job of erasing speed without fade, tho’ we’d choose a pedal that wasn’t muddy-feeling at the top. A 154-foot 70-to-zero stopping distance is just longer than the M4’s. Considering the RC F carries extra poundage, that’s a commendable spectacle.

Unlike its curb weight, the RC F’s base price has gone down, and at $63,325 it is $1200 less than the two thousand fourteen IS F. Our test car came with the Spectacle package, which is a big investment at $5500. With it you get an M4-style carbon-fiber roof, carbon rear wing, and a torque-vectoring differential. The diff, a very first for Toyota, has three settings independent of the drive modes: normal, slalom, and track. Slalom offers the most-aggressive torque swings. The diff effectively mitigates understeer but works only when you are on the throttle. Unadvertised is the package’s 50-pound weight penalty. The carbon-fiber lumps save about fifteen pounds, but the unit, with its electrical motors and clutch packs, is sixty six pounds stronger than the standard Torsen limited-slip diff.

In the ultrabright Warm Pearl paint, the RC F looks more brash and busy than flowing and elegant. It leans hard on the Japanese comic-book robot-superhero aesthetic. And indeed, its power-to-weight ratio is the only thing keeping the F from being an actual superhero. It may not have the outright thrust or balance of an M4, or even the style of an RS5, but the fresh F has a personality all its own, a Japanese Camaro with lots of buttons and displays and a boisterous voice. The IS F made its debut in two thousand seven as a rapid but otherwise unexceptional Lexus, tho’ quiet improvements meant that by two thousand eleven the car was near the top of its class. Four years later, the RC F comes in the market tightly planted there.

Highs, Lows, and Verdict

Highs:

Swaddling seats, makes all the right noises, effortless to go quick.

Not the preferred kind of curb appeal, lacks an edge in a razor-sharp segment.

Verdict:

He’s not intense, he’s my . . . actually, he is alarmingly strenuous.

Lexus RC F Reviews – Lexus RC F Price, Photos, and Specs – Car and Driver

Lexus RC F

Car and Driver

Tested: two thousand fifteen Lexus RC F

2015 Lexus RC F

• Nov 2014
• By K.C. COLWELL
• Photography By ANDREW TRAHAN

Typically, when full-line car companies set out to develop a coupe, they embark with a sedan from the current lineup, trim two doors, and rewrap the package in a sleeker assets. A shorter wheelbase is optional. Lexus spinned up that memo and burned it before going to work on the RC. Instead, to form its fresh coupe’s structure, Lexus combined the front clip of the GS sedan, the center section of the old IS C convertible, and the rear end of the IS sedan, using adhesives and welding and a fancy technology called laser screw welding, which permits for more frequent tacks and thus greater rigidity.

The three-piece treatment makes more sense once it’s explained. The GS front gives engineers the extra track width they desired for treating. They deemed the IS rear sufficient to keep the car’s dimensions clean, and the IS C center section necessary for its inherent stiffness and shorter wheelbase. Compared with the current IS sedan, the RC coupe is toughly 1.Five inches longer, broader, and lower, but with a Two.7-inch shorter wheelbase.

The RC F we have here is the hot-rod version of the RC, and the car Lexus is using to effectively substitute its IS F sedan, which does not have an analogue in this fresh IS generation. (Lexus’s hi-po four-door will be the GS F, fatter and likely more expensive than the old M3-baiting IS F.) But the RC F is not attempting to be a direct BMW M-whatever knockoff; it has its own thing going. The snug cockpit swaddles the driver with information and controls in what seems like an suitable techno-modern, Tokyo-by-night design scheme. A high center console features an optional touchpad that is part of the $2840 navigation and up­graded stereo package, and the instruments showcase a morphing LCD center tach, similar to the LFA’s. Almost everything in the car can be adjusted with the haptic infotainment control pad, but there are also redundant buttons with knobs for volume and tuning, just as in the current IS.

The LCD tach switches its appearance inbetween the four drive modes (eco, normal, sport, and sport plus) and is flanked by another screen on the left, which displays tire pressures, radio stations, g-forces, and just about everything else. A smaller analog speedometer lies to the right.

There are few occasions in life when we’d say that four hundred sixty seven horsepower isn’t enough. This is one of them. While the IS F’s old Five.0-liter V-8 got scrupulously overhauled for this fresh RC F, the car weighs four thousand forty eight pounds, 200-plus more than the old sedan.

Mass is the RC F’s millstone. It has four hundred pounds on a BMW M4 and weighs as much as the four-wheel-drive Audi RS5. In a three-way haul race, the Bimmer walks away, with the F and RS5 keeping tempo through the quarter-mile. By one hundred thirty mph, the RC F has eked out a almost two-second lead on the RS5. Keep your foot in it and a governor abruptly halts acceleration at one hundred seventy one mph.

With all the data crunched, the RC F proves no quicker than the old IS F. Nor is it slower, tho’. We recorded a Four.3-second zero-to-60 and a quarter-mile time of 12.8 seconds, identical to a two thousand eight IS F. Identical, too, is the naturally aspirated V-8 wail. While muted in the cabin, pedestrians will flinch when the intake’s noise flap opens and the camshaft timing switches the engine’s rumble into a sweaty roar.

Lexus gets credit for adding fifty one horsepower to the V-8 with something more than a software update and without resorting to coerced induction (cough, cough, BMW). Titanium valves, all thirty two of them, along with a lighter crankshaft and con-rods, permitted engineers to lift the redline by five hundred rpm to 7300. Only the 8300-rpm Audi RS5 can rival the F for aural gratification; the M4’s turbocharged and overly enhanced soundtrack is no match. If only the RC F were quicker for it.

More revs equals more power, but it also requires more air and fuel. Thus, the 2UR-GSE, as the V-8 is coded, gets a larger throttle figure and higher-flow fuel injectors. Max power comes at seven thousand one hundred rpm, while the torque peak of three hundred eighty nine pound-feet, up eighteen from the IS F, is available at four thousand eight hundred rpm. That’s four hundred rpm earlier than the old engine. Compression also increases to 12.Trio:1, from 11.8:1.

Enabling the extra power are wider-range cam phasers, providing the V-8 Atkinson-cycle capability. This improves the RC F’s efficiency during cruising and under low explosions and gives the RC F a 2-mpg boost in EPA highway testing over the old IS F, to twenty five mpg. City fuel economy is unchanged at 16. Thirsty, the RC F chugged a gallon of premium every fifteen miles during its stay here.

All the work that went into the structure is apparent from the very first few turns of the wheel. An astonishingly stiff unibody means the cowl never quivers because of the stiff central section’s origin as a convertible. The rigid architecture succinctly telegraphs all communication from the chassis, which is both good and bad. Thrust the front axle past its limit and tire chatter shimmies up the steering column, as it’s supposed to. But a without mercy pitted road sends some shudders to the spines of passengers as well. The car feels as supple as a Lexus ES on a sleek road, something the rigid, tense M4 can’t claim.

The F’s seats come stacked with large bolsters in the front buckets, suitable for a car capable of 0.95 g on the skidpad. Considering the Michelin Pilot Super Sports wrapping 19-inch forged BBS wheels, that’s lower than we expected, but the car comes set up with a healthy amount of understeer. Lexus admits that it didn’t want to build an intimidating car. Its purpose was a PG-rated spectacle coupe, joy for all skill levels, and on that it has delivered.

Despite the four drive modes, the steering offers only normal and sport options. The latter, active in sport and sport plus, adds heft but no feedback. Like a stubborn toddler, the wheel communicates clearly only when its diaper is total, when the tires have gone over the edge.

Transmission logic will adapt to a particular driving style, but the eight-speed auto, another IS F carryover, responds to manual inputs without protest. Sturdy 15.0-inch front rotors and 13.6-inch rear rotors do an impeccable job of erasing speed without fade, tho’ we’d choose a pedal that wasn’t muddy-feeling at the top. A 154-foot 70-to-zero stopping distance is just longer than the M4’s. Considering the RC F carries extra poundage, that’s a commendable spectacle.

Unlike its curb weight, the RC F’s base price has gone down, and at $63,325 it is $1200 less than the two thousand fourteen IS F. Our test car came with the Spectacle package, which is a big investment at $5500. With it you get an M4-style carbon-fiber roof, carbon rear wing, and a torque-vectoring differential. The diff, a very first for Toyota, has three settings independent of the drive modes: normal, slalom, and track. Slalom offers the most-aggressive torque swings. The diff effectively mitigates understeer but works only when you are on the throttle. Unadvertised is the package’s 50-pound weight penalty. The carbon-fiber chunks save about fifteen pounds, but the unit, with its electrical motors and clutch packs, is sixty six pounds stronger than the standard Torsen limited-slip diff.

In the ultrabright Super hot Pearl paint, the RC F looks more brash and busy than flowing and elegant. It leans hard on the Japanese comic-book robot-superhero aesthetic. And indeed, its power-to-weight ratio is the only thing keeping the F from being an actual superhero. It may not have the outright thrust or balance of an M4, or even the style of an RS5, but the fresh F has a personality all its own, a Japanese Camaro with lots of buttons and displays and a boisterous voice. The IS F made its debut in two thousand seven as a prompt but otherwise unexceptional Lexus, however quiet improvements meant that by two thousand eleven the car was near the top of its class. Four years later, the RC F comes in the market stiffly planted there.

Highs, Lows, and Verdict

Highs:

Swaddling seats, makes all the right noises, effortless to go quick.

Not the preferred kind of curb appeal, lacks an edge in a razor-sharp segment.

Verdict:

He’s not strenuous, he’s my . . . actually, he is alarmingly intense.

Related movie: