What Do You Need to Determine the Street Value of a $375,000 Lexus LFA? A Dyno, Dragstrip and An $87,000 Nissan GT-R.
May 10, 2010
/ By Ed Loh
/ Photography by Evan Klein
The phone rings. It's Bill from down the street, with an offer he thinks we can't refuse. While he's normally our local fix for luxurious, relaxing trips (that sometimes cause drowsiness), today he proffers something vastly different: all the speed we can handle for 12 hours. The catch is this deal needs to go down in the next three days. Miss that window and his special shipment gets loaded into a crate and flown back to the Far East. Think about it he says, and get back to me.
What is there to consider?
Bill, you see, reps Lexus and is offering a 552-horsepower dose of nose-candy-colored LFA. We're intrigued, but also irked at the short notice and implication that we're easy and desperate for such a rush. Like we'd just drop everything and clear our schedule for a taste of this $375,000 LFA.
We call him back and arrange to meet the early the next morning at an industrial park off the freeway in Riverside, California.
They say the first hit is free, but this one is going to cost us a bit of our soul. Lexus USA owns but one LFA, a jet-black model used for advertising and potential customer events. This white one is on loan from Japan at substantial cost to the company -- air freight alone is some $40,000. Its time is up and it needs to go back ASAP, hence the last-minute notice.
It is also a preproduction prototype -- a crusher in industry parlance. It has no VIN or license plate, and sits on non-DOT-approved tires, so we can't drive it on the street. When we're done with it, it gets shipped back to Japan where it will likely be reduced to a fine, expensive powder. To ensure we don't facilitate an earlier end on this side of the Pacific, two watchful handlers will accompany us while we have it.
So, just how are we supposed to assess the LFA's street value with such draconian measures in place? We have a few tricks up our sleeve, but first we need verify its potency. Off to the speed shop.
The R&D center at K&N Air Filters dynos hundreds of cars a year in order to establish baseline figures and track performance of its products. Last year, K&N cycled its dynos over 6,800 times -- so often, that the companies that supply and support the dynomometer equipment use K&N's shop as a test bed for future upgrades. Bert, Dave, Kirk, and the rest of the guys that run the joint have seen a lot of cars come through, but judging by their reaction when the Toyota racing-liveried 18-wheeler pulls up, they haven't seen anything like the LFA.
Just what does $375,000 buy? About 3562 pounds of the purest, highest quality speed Japan has ever produced. Lexus claims a top speed of 202 mph from the LFA's 4.8-liter, Formula-1-derived, 552-horsepower V-10. Any way you cut it -- $232.00 per kilo or 6.5 lbs/hp -- those are impressive numbers. Are they for real? That's what we're about to find out.
Before we can even begin to strap the LFA down, it has to go up on a lift. There is small matter of removing three separate belly plans so that safety strap hard points can be accessed. Lexus claims it didn't initially plan on racing the LFA, and for the first time, that seems abundantly clear. More than 70 rubber gasket Torx bolts keep the front and two rear belly trays firmly attached to the car, necessitating some 30 minutes of removal time (and another 40 minutes to put it all back together).
Though the LFA is rear drive, we strap it to K&N's all-wheel drive Superflow dynamometer. Why? Because we tested our long-term, 2010 Nissan GT-R on the exact same system a few months earlier. (But more on that later.) Expectations are high, and K&N's dyno squad has a ritual when special cars like this pull in. Everyone present picks a horsepower number and throws in a buck for a winner-take-all dyno lottery. Most of the guys don't know much about the LFA, except what they've seen and heard during the first exploratory pass. No wonder wheel horsepower estimates run from 450 at the low end to 545 (only seven hp off the official crank number); the LFA's wide open wail has the guys itching for the upcoming supercar super lotto.
