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Despite Lexus’s vehement denial to The Drive of the existence of an F-tuned LC coupe earlier this year, a new report from Japanese auto mag Holiday Auto speaking to an anonymous company insider now says that an LC F is indeed happening.
From what we can interpret from a shoddily Google-translated version of the article, the upcoming hot LC will be powered by a twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V8, signaling the end of the naturally-aspirated V8 era of fast Lexuses (Lexi?). First seen in the IS F introduced a whole decade ago, the company’s guttural 5.0-liter V8 sat in the engine bays of the GS F, RC F, and LC 500. Outside of the LFA, it defined Lexus’s performance cars. With the Aston Martin V8 Vantage being replaced with a similarly-boosted mill, the Lexus 8-pot is now the only naturally-aspirated V8 performance car engine you can buy new that isn’t American or in a Maserati.
While displacement will go down, horsepower sure as hell won’t as the report goes on to say that the turbocharged LC F will be good for 620-horsepower—an entire Mazda3’s worth of grunt more than the LC 500’s 471 ponies. It also bests that of the 577-horse Mercedes-AMG GT R and 610-hp Audi R8 V-10 Plus.
Holiday Auto also says that the LC F will cost the equivalent of around $176,800 and reach production in 2019 at the earliest.
A Lexus employee confirmed to The Drive that an LC F is indeed a thing that’s understood to be in the works, even corroborating the above report’s claims of it using a twin-turbo 4.0-liter.
