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Wednesdays are the worst. Midway through the week, Karen from accounting is breathing down your neck, the coffee in the breakroom is already stale, IT just shut down your computer for routine maintenance, and the seconds tick with geologic tempo. So, why not take a short break and treat yo’ self to the Lexus LFA’s earth-shatteringly delicious V-10? We think you deserve it.
The Lexus LFA is a strange supercar. Its history is filled with lulls and fits of brilliance, retooling, rebodying, and a partnership with Yamaha which helped create a 4.8-liter naturally aspirated V-10 engine capable of hitting a 9,000-rpm redline and solidified it as one of the most glorious of sounding engines ever fit to a road car.
Anyone can build a good-sounding V-10. But to have something sound like the LFA, and indeed, an F1 car, you need a lack of internal reciprocating mass. Lexus tapped Yamaha to help engineer it. The V-10 got a dry-sump oil system, dual-stage intake, and 10 individual throttle bodies, but the real hero is the V-10’s lack of internal weight.
The engine received forged aluminum pistons, forged titanium connecting rods, solid titanium valves, and a three-way titanium exhaust. By reducing the weight of the engine’s internals, it’s free to spin up to those redline upper echelons with lightning efficiency. From idle, you can blip the throttle and the V-10 will snap to redline in just 0.6-seconds.
Not only can you hear just how quickly the LFA blips through its 6-speed single-clutch automated sequential transmission, but the LFA revs so violently quick that Lexus had to engineer a new digital tachometer just to keep up with it. Aside from a backstory that involves nearly a decade in development hell—which saw the car first shod in aluminum and then in carbon fiber—and a chest-clenching price of $375,000 when new, the LFA is a pretty standard supercar with 553 horsepower, 354 pound-feet of torque, and a 0-60 mph time of just 3.6 seconds. Better yet, you can technically still buy a brand new one.
After its initial run, there were a few LFAs still floating around dealership lots, unsold and unloved. A few years ago, it was announced that 12 pristine models were still up for grabs, but recently that number has been dwindling and now sits at just four LFAs—three were sold this year—still ready to find their first, and hopefully forever, homes.
With your daily dose of exotic V-10s now satiated, you’re free to go back to work. Or, if you’re like us, you’ll settle into the storage closet, pop in your headphones, and put this video on repeat while the rest of the office goes up in flames. Enjoy.
