Toyota’s upmarket brand Lexus has always been focused on innovative engineering concepts, though not typically in the service of speed. The pocket protector dorks at the company usually spend their efforts trying to find a way to make cars quieter or softer, but for a short time from 2010 to 2012, those engineers assembled 500 examples of one of the most fabulous supercars to ever have existed. One of the 38 red examples built is crossing the auction block again at Mecum’s Indianapolis sale this month, and if you have the means, maybe go bid on it. It didn’t sell at the company’s Kissimmee sale in January, so the bid goes on.
If you weren’t around the car world back then, you’ll never really know what it was like, but this car got a bit over a decade of hype before it finally released to the ultra-wealthy public. Only twenty examples were built per month at a cost of $375,000 each, but Lexus reportedly lost money on every single one of them.
There are so many cars available on the market today if you wanted to go faster than this. That’s not really the point. The whole point is the magnificent 4.8-liter V10 engine up front. It’s like a front-engine Porsche Carrera GT in a way, you know? Or maybe it’s a modern Porsche 959? It makes 552 horseponies and pushes 354 lb-ft of torque to the ground through a 6-speed sequential gearbox, but the engine’s really special statistic is its 9,000 RPM redline. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.
The design still looks great all these years later, and even with the Corvette-style boomer-spec optional polished wheels, it remains a true visual masterpiece. There are a bunch of ways that you can show off if you absolutely have to have a supercar, but I think the LFA might be the best of them. Unlike a new Ferrari or Lamborghini or something, if you buy an LFA you kind of prove that you’re in the know. You’re one of the cognoscenti driving around in this V10 monster. Maybe it doesn’t have the 0-60 time of a new McLaren, but you’ll definitely get more cool points. And you can’t really go that fast on the street anyway.
Some jackass bought this beautiful piece of engineering and only put 73 miles on the odometer in all that time. What the hell was the point of that? Lexus spent all that time and money engineering a great engine and you never even got it through the break-in period? I hope the person that ends up with this next chooses to give the car a life it deserves, because low-mile supercars are the dumbest thing in the world.
Mecum puts the pre-auction estimate for Clifford The Big Red Lexus between $850,000 and 950,000. Good luck, I guess? I don’t personally believe that any driving experience in the world is worth more than $60,000, but maybe you have significantly more money than you know what to do with, and you really like red. If you’re the kind of person looking to drop nearly a million bucks on a twelve-year-old Lexus, here’s your chance. It’s crossing the block on May 18, so get yourself to Indianapolis if you want it.