Lexus LF 2011 News

Lexus Australia has announced it will recall 2166 vehicles over an airbag fault, the latest in a long list of malfunctioning airbags made by embattled Japanese parts manufacturer Takata.

Channel 9 personality Natalie Gruzlewski added some glamour to the newly launched Lexus showroom at Southport when she was lured back to the small screen to film the luxury car dealership's new television commercials.The former Gold Coast News weather girl and host of The Farmer Wants a Wife, who is married to property developer Jack Ray, in February gave birth to daughter Olivia.She has now added Lexus of Southport ambassador to her list of duties.When word of her appearance spread, so did the number of Lexus staff who suddenly had a reason to visit the showroom.Natalie starred alongside the Lexus range of innovative hybrids, dynamic F Sport vehicles and the exciting IS F and rare LFA Supercar.The Supercar is a star in its own right - one of only 10 LFAs in Australia and 500 in the world. Only three are garaged in southeast Queensland.No longer in production, the vehicle retailed for $750,000.It set a record of 7min 14sec for the fastest production car using road tyres around Nurburgring in Germany.The two television and radio commercials featuring Natalie will highlight the showroom features available to Lexus owners. 

It was close to two years ago that the Lexus LFA supercar, after enduring an almost decade-long gestation period, finally entered production at Toyota’s Motomachi plant in Japan. At its launch, Lexus confirmed the LFA would be built in an exclusive run of just 500 units in total, and that the cars would be painstakingly assembled at the rate of just one per (working) day up until December, 2012.  Well, Lexus has now revealed that the LFA’s planned production run has now been completed, with the final example being a white LFA Nürburgring Package. It rolled off the line at the Motomachi plant on December 14.  A special plaque showing the car’s build number confirms this is the 500th LFA, which is contradictory to what comedian Jay Leno said about a special one-off LFA Spyder he recently drove during an episode of his online series Jay Leno’s Garage. In that particular episode he states that the LFA Spyder was build number 500. Regardless of what build number this LFA has, it is now a member of one of the most exclusive set of cars on the planet. A total of 170 people helped to bring each and every LFA to life, including specialists who built the car’s carbon fiber components. Roughly 65 percent of the LFA is composed of Formula One-grade carbon fiber, aiding strength and rigidity while reducing vehicle weight dramatically. Then there’s the car’s 4.8-liter V-10 engine, one of the fastest-revving and best-sounding production engines in the world. It developed a healthy 412 kilowatts and helped propel the LFA Nürburgring Package around the German race track for which it’s named in an amazing 7:14.64. No doubt Toyota will be retaining the technological skills gained during the development and production of the LFA for its future models. Unfortunately, there’s been no mention of a successor but mysterious LFA prototypes spotted on several occasions at the Nürburgring suggest future developments are planned. MotorAuthority  

In a way it really had to be or the high fliers who buy these cars would not have given it a second glance. It had to be something very special and special it is indeed as we discovered this week behind the wheel at Victoria's Sandown race track.Sure it goes hard and stops just as quickly, with an exhilirating exhaust note that sounds like an F1 car — but there's so much more to this car. Ten years in the making, the LFA symbolises everything that Lexus says it strives to be — innovative, passionate and inspirational.TECHNOLOGYThe heart of the matter is a carbon fibre shell fitted with a light weight all-aluminium 4.8-litre V10 that pumps out 412kW of power and 480Nm of torque, combined with a sequential single clutch robotised manual transmission and oil cooler.The LFA has a top speed of 325km/h and accelerates to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds. A special Nurburgring edition boosts power to 420kW. Yamaha gave the guys some help with the engine design and as a result it revs all the way to 9000rpm.DESIGNSixty-five per cent of LFA's body structure is carbon fibre, while the remaining 35 per cent is aluminium. The original analogue dials were replaced with a digital instrumentation because the analogue tachometer couldn't keep up.The LFA is an infinitely better looking thing than Nissan's GT-R and faster around Germany's famous Nurburgring too, where it held the production car record until recently. Among others the LFA boasts the world's first seatbelt airbag to reduce chest and neck bruising.LIMITED EDITIONOnly 500 of the cars will be built, of which 170 have already found homes in the United States, another 150 have gone to Japan itself and a mere handful are headed our way — 10 to be exact (maybe a couple more if Lexus can swing it).In the States, one couple bought the car simply because it was the most expensive Lexus available and they had always owned the top model. But the buyers are not the usual suspects, revealed Lexus Australia corporate manager Peter Evans.For the most part they're successful, self-made men, 35-45 years of age whose faces you are unlikely to see in the newspapers. One owns a Bugatti Veyron and the others own or have owned other performance cars. One man is even thinking of buying a second Nurburg edition to keep and drive in the United States.As a group, Evans said they are remarkably unpretentious.Lexus took three buyers to the Nurburgring where until a few weeks ago the LFA held the lap record for a production car. What they share is an overwhelming enthusiasm for the car."They're a fascinationg group of individuals," he said.So what do you get for your $700,000 apart from the car? For one thing you get private tuition from racing driver Alan Jones who is the Lexus LFA ambassador. It doesn't get better than that.LEXUS LFAPrice: $750,000Economy: 16.7 l/100km; 387g/km CO2Safety equipment: 5 airbags, ABS, EBD, stability control.Engine: 412kW/480Nm 4.8-litre 40-valve DOHC V10Transmission: rear-mounted six-speed automated sequential gearboxBody: 2-door, 2 seatsDimensions: 4505mm (L); 1895mm (W); 1220mm (H); 2605mm (WB)Weight: 1540kgTyre size: 20in (fr 265/35, rr 305/30), no sparePerformance: 0-100 km/h 3.7 seconds, top speed 325km/h.

The McLaren MP4-12C tops the list of Dad's dream cars.

The millionaire heiress received the banana-coloured car as a 30th birthday present earlier this year from her then boyfriend Cy Waits.She has since broken up with Waits and decided she wanted a white LFA.It is not known whether the original LFA went back to the old boyfriend or was traded in for the new one.

And our preference for sporty models will see Lexus put its performance-oriented F Sport models. The F Sport vehicles represent almost half of IS350 sales and around a quarter of IS250s. “Lexus is committed to growing its performance portfolio – with two more F Sport models destined for launch next year,” chief executive Tony Cramb said. The growth in F Sport model sales is also reflected in Lexus Australia doubling its order of LFA vehicles from an initial allocation of five to 10 of the limited-build $700,000 supercars. The $700,000 LFA is made from carbon fibre and exotic alloys and is powered by a 4.8 litre V8 with 412kW and 480Nm. That power is fed through a six-speed automatic transmission and gives the lightweight car a 0-100km/h time of 3.9 seconds. “Australia is viewed as a yardstick for the rest of the world, and our increased allocation of LFAs demonstrates the strength of the brand locally and the importance we hold in the global Lexus market,” Lexus Australia chief executive Tony Cramb said.

…..they were once reserved for F1 cars, MotoGP bikes and aeroplanes.

The latest generation of grand prix cars are petrol-electric hybrids that also use a range of high-tech systems and technologies, right down to long-life oils, that will eventually find their way into everyday road cars.An F1 hybrid is very different from a Toyota Prius, since braking energy is stored and released for a burst of speed and not for low-speed electric driving, but the work done on high-tech batteries and computer control systems is easily transferred to production line heroes.It's typical of grand prix technology transfer, which has been a reality in racing for decades. Still, it's ironic that some of the most advanced safety features in road cars - ABS brakes and ESP stability control - are banned from Formula One and there is no way yet to adapt airbags to the violent and unpredictable crashes in grand prix races.Tracing the F1 roots of today's road cars is relatively easy, starting with engine and gearbox technology from the 1990s. Honda developed and refined the V-Tech adjustable camshaft timing that combines power and economy in racing and Ferrari led the world into the era of robotised manu-matic gearboxes."V-Tech technology came directly from Formula One. At the time it was new to the Honda V10 engine used by McLaren, but now it's on every road going Honda car, right down to our economy cars and hybrids," says Mark Higgins of Honda Australia.Current F1 cars used gearboxes which have a 'seamless shift' system that's similar to the double-clutch gearboxes fitted to growing number of cars, including the Volkswagen Golf. Aerodynamics and high-tech materials are two other important areas.Carbon fibre is starting to find its way into top-end sports cars, including the Lexus LF-A supercar, after being adapted from aerospace to racing. McLaren was the first to do the job and now the ultra- strong composite is universally used in F1 and being adapted to lightweight city cars of the future.A range of other 'on the aero' front, this year's grand prix cars have a driver-adjustable rear wing - a long way ahead of the 1950s 'air brake' used by Mercedes-Benz at Le Mans - and that technology is coming fast for road cars.Ferrari has aerofoils in the nose of its latest 458 Italia that change shape at various speeds to assist cooling and downforce. In future, 'active' aero systems will blank the front ends of road cars at speeds to cut drag and improve fuel economy - then open again for cooling when the car is stopped in traffic. This sort of work is also made easier by the complex artificial wind tunnels contained in F1 computers - the programs are called Computational Fluid Dynamics - used to test and develop new body parts.Ford recently credited CFD work on the upcoming Ranger pickup and almost every major maker uses CFD for early design and development work. Even F1 fuels and oils are used for road car work, with Shell trumpeting the V-Power development it did with Ferrari before introducing its current flagship fuel. And it has used grand prix engines for decades to test the oils which now allow road cars to run for more than 10,000 kilometres between changes.

The paparazzi may have snapped Paris Hilton with her new LFA, but they've got nothing on the latest work from Lexus.Part of their campaign “The Hard Way”, Lexus have teamed up with Sports Illustrated for a very exotic photo shoot. Set in an aeroplane hanger, champion drifter Rhys Millen smokes the wheels of the 412kW LFA as Dutch supermodel Rianne Ten Haken watches on, right in the middle of it.“It moved so quickly” said Haken, “it was just like the energy around me totally changed.”