Being such a masterpiece, I always wonder why the LFA didn’t do well when it first came out. Yet now you see them selling for damn near $1M. It’s like Van Gogh. No one appreciated the work of art until it was gone. But why?
What changed? Do you see any brand new V8’s, V10’s and V12’s being offered these days?
A V10 Lexus is desirable in an era where you will never see a vehicle like that ever again.
It suffered in comparisons at the time of release regarding performance value, relative especially to the GT-R. But the uniqueness of the car overall along with the lusted-after naturally-aspirated V10 have since caught a lot of attention as the years advanced.
Quite like it myself. But will just have to be content with the $5 Matchbox collectors LFA on the shelf for now lol.
It happens with nearly every supercar/specialty vehicle. Someone who couldn’t afford it ten years ago but has crazy money now is willing to pay for their dream. Happened with 1970’s muscle cars in the 2000’s. Now it’s happening with Japanese exotics and Porsches
$375,000 on release for a car that wasn’t deemed a hypercar was seen as bad value.
It failed because it launched years after it’s performance contemporaries as a result of toyota/lexus’ pursuit of perfection, car was delayed over and over again.
I remember people couldn’t shut up about it being a Lexus. Probably the dumbest argument possible.
It was one of the few cars that even I as a child could tell was very special and more exotic than “exotic” cars.
Delayed appreciation, basically. When it came out, we’d been waiting a decade, and for the price point it was underwhelming… especially considering it was “just a Lexus”.
People now with that good ol’ hindsight, realize what Toyota was doing with the LFA. It’s primary purpose was as a test bed for future Lexuses…plus you can’t deny how cool a Toyota-Yamaha designed V10 is.
The same like every other sports car out there. They all just have varying magnitudes. The 964 could be bought for pennies not even 15 years ago. You could commonly find somewhat mint ones for less than $20k. Now? You can’t find a rusty roller with no engine or interior for less than $30k. Mint examples are commanding nearly $100k or more. I think the fact that EVs becoming more prevalent and cars are becoming way more digital is subconsciously driving people to want more “analog and pure” driving experiences.
Because most of the people that buy these cars aren’t real enthusiasts. They care about hp numbers and track times they’ll never be within 10 seconds of. The LFA is one of the best sports cars ever made. For example, the rx7 is not that fast, and won’t be fast without extensive modifications; but it’s an amazing sports car and because it’s more attainable to car enthusiasts it was popular and reached goat status much faster than the LFA.
The same song is sung about a lot of hot collector cars, from the 250 GTO to the Superbird.
Hell, the same thing is true in watches. The Paul Newman Daytona was a failure and Rolex retailers were swapping out the faces to make them more marketable. Now, they sell for north of $300k.
It’s crazy the amount of people that equate a cars value with its speed. For a car like that it’s important to be quick, and quick it was, but it also comes down to how it feels to drive, power delivery etc. The LFA by all accounts was an incredible machine to drive and has one hell of a motor. I’d rather drive one of them than some uber quick machine that you’re afraid to put your foot down in or need to ring it out to properly enjoy it.
The LFA is a good example of something Doug Demuro did a whole video about: enthusiast-targeted cars that enthusiasts actively dislike when they are first sold are weirdly the cars that will increase in value. This is especially true if the car in question is rare. The LFA checks all of these boxes.
Other examples he mentioned include the BMW “clownshoe” M Coupe, the Plymouth Superbird, the first Ford GT, the Porsche Carrera GT, the final version of the first gen Acura NSX, BMW 8 series etc, etc. People didn’t want any of those cars when they were actually for sale, all of them went on to become some of the most desirable collector cars today.
The Carrera GT is to me the strongest recent example. No one wanted them 18 years ago, now they’re seen as one of the greatest cars of all time.
The biggest reason IMO is that people didn’t think that this engine was the second-to-last high revving V10 that would ever exist. I think we all thought 9k NA engines would continue forever. I’m pretty sure at the time I thought we’d be seeing 10k, 11k, 12k redlines in the future.
Shit Honda had a 9k RPM engine in a 30k car at the time. And now the Ferrari V8 is dead. Unpredictable plot twist that made the LFA much more special now than it was at the time.
Nothing wrong with the LFA. Just the timing of its release (just before the financial crisis) and also at the same time, the R35 Nissan GTR came out which is faster and cheaper.
The performance and power specs were from a previous era of super cars. When they released the car in 2012 it was past its prime, it was originally intended to be released earlier(believe 2007) but they had to redo the chassis because it was too heavy. 553hp in 2012 didn’t look enticing for $375k when Lamborghinis and Ferraris were putting out 700hp for the same money, and a GTR 1/3 of the price offered the same level of performance. You simply had to be a diehard Lexus fan to buy one.
Now that it’s old enough people are starting to see its collector value. That’s why prices are sky rocketing. On top of that the push for alternative fuels and smaller engines make people see the value in having a NA high revving V10.
The extended period of low interest rates and rampant speculation of collector items that followed has boosted a lot of NA supercars to insane prices. This has only been amplified for the push to electrify and higher emissions standards leading to smaller turbo engines.