Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil may have been misunderstood as some form of Satanic worship, but the parable about the devil living in each of us is strangely resonant now that I've driven the Lexus IS F.
2009 Lexus IS F
Jekyll and Hyde, The Devil Inside -- either way you slice it, that's the soul of the IS F. Mild-mannered Lexus by day, track-chomping, tire-shredding, adrenaline-spiking sports car monster by night.
It's the car that turned Lexus's otherwise painfully considered, careful approach to product planning on its ear. It's the car that nobody, probably even Lexus itself, ever thought it would build.
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
The F is the Lexus IS that ripped out the Charles Atlas ad and sought pharmaceutical advice from Barry Bonds. It spent the last year bulking up -- thanks to a 416-horsepower V8, massive Brembo brakes, an eight-speed automatic transmission with a sport shift mode that's actually sporty, new suspension components -- and slimming down, with an inch-lower ride height and a curb weight that despite the larger engine and transmission only grows by 115 kilograms.
The result is a car that rips off 0-100 km/h in 4.8 seconds, a quarter-mile in 13.0 seconds and a top speed of 270 km/h.
And yet, put it into drive, take a reasoned approach with the accelerator and it's as well-behaved as any other Lexus. It doesn't even become a pig on gas, with a combined fuel-consumption rating of 11 litres per 100 km, which is 22 per cent below the class average (including key competitors BMW M3 and Audi RS4).
And for all the tire you'll leave behind on the track, the F won't destroy your wallet, relative to its competitors. The base price is $64,400. The BMW M3 starts at $69,900 and the Audi RS4 at $94,200.
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
Our introduction to the F is, appropriately enough, Calabogie Motorsports Park outside Ottawa. Appropriately, because Calabogie began much the way the F did. Calabogie president Mark Steenbakkers got tired of waiting -- waiting for the opportunity to book lapping sessions at Mosport or Shannonville. Chief engineer Yukihiko Yaguchi had a similar feeling, getting tired of waiting for Toyota or Lexus to build the kind of performance car that would stir his enthusiast's soul.
Both decided to stop waiting and just build it. And both knocked it out of the park.
Calabogie is the ideal site to test the F. It's a challenging 5.05-km track with 20 turns, a 2,000-foot straightaway, 65 feet of elevation change and enough blind crests, unexpected apexes and sphincter moments to make this a fun track for even the most seasoned Calabogie veteran racer.
It's also where the IS F's split personality is most evident. To learn the track, we took a, relatively speaking, leisurely pace to start with. We generally left the automatic transmission in D. Here, the more sedate Jekyll comes to play. It's fun, but the transmission seems slow to respond to aggressive throttle commands. However, it is smooth, and it shifts through the eight gears as quickly as possible, helping maximize fuel efficiency.
Once we are done with our learning laps, we flick the gear shift over to manual mode. Subtly, Mr. Hyde starts to emerge. It is virtually like someone ripped out the sedate slushbox and slammed in a Ferrari direct-shift gearbox. Upshifts are immediate, unlike most take-a-message manumatics, and crisp. Lexus says a shift is implemented within a tenth of a second of the request. It certainly seems so.
Downshifts are not only similarly immediate, they're met with a throttle blip to match engine speed.
With this transmission, Lexus seems to have attained the best of two disparate worlds. It is smooth and seamless in one mode, and rip-and-tear aggressive in the other.
It is in marked contrast to some direct-shift gearboxes, which can be abrupt and harsh during normal driving.
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
And it highlights the key to Lexus's thinking behind the IS F. While Lexus was dragged, kicking and screaming, into building the F, they steadfastly refused to give Yaguchi any leeway to ignore what has been the Lexus hallmark -- a luxury drive that tries to deliver exceptional build quality and ultimate passenger comfort.
So despite its excellent handling, sticking to the track like glue, the IS F is in normal driving nearly as comfortable as any other IS.
One carry-over from the IS that perhaps shouldn't have made the trip may be the electric-assist power steering. A little crisper steering would make this IS the class leader in handling. Still, feedback is excellent, with the car giving drivers plenty of warning that things may go awry.
In this regard, the F has all the dynamic stupidity-control technology Lexus can muster: Vehicle Dynamic Information Management (VDIM), possibly the best such system on the market; Vehicle Stability Control; Brake Assist; brake force distribution and traction control.
VDIM differs from many stability-control systems in that it anticipates problems early and intervenes so subtly, many drivers wouldn't even know. Less sophisticated systems react by drastically cutting engine power and applying braking. The spanking from such systems can be embarrassing.
In decidedly un-Lexus fashion, drivers can easily defeat all stability-control functions, or can set them to a sport mode, which gives drivers a 10 per cent loss of directional control before intervening.
In standard IS models, defeating the stability control is a procedure known only to select individuals, and requires pushing a number of interior control buttons in a complex series. On the launch of the current-generation standard IS, only one person at the event -- the chief engineer from Japan -- knew the keystroke combination to defeat the systems.
I stuck around St. Petersburg,
When I saw it was a time for a change
Chief engineer Yaguchi didn't kill the czar and his ministers, but he certainly held Lexus's feet to the fire to get this car built.
Typically, Lexus models start not with the dreams of an engineer, but with the dull, boring analysis of the product planning department.
Yaguchi, who has worked on such cars as the Toyota Supra Supercharged, Lexus LS and the first Lexus GS, was foremost a driving enthusiast who gave up waiting for product planners to ask him to build the kind of car he wanted.
He pitched his idea to the product planners, who, reluctantly, agreed. But he still didn't have a budget. So he scraped together a team of experts who worked in their spare time on the project. He started in 2004.
Yamaha agreed to work on the engine. Toyota Technocraft -- Toyota's skunkworks division -- helped with the technology, including revised suspension, the eight-speed transmission, the massive Brembo brakes and 19-inch wheels.
Once it was built, they tested it. And tested it. And tested it. Lexus claims it's the most heavily tested production vehicle ever built by Toyota or Lexus. It was tested on the Nordschleife at N ºrburgring, Fuji Speedway, France's Circuit Paul Ricard, Laguna Sega and Circuit Zolder in Belgium.
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
All this work results in a car that thrills a driver as much as it coddles other occupants.
Thrashing around Calabogie, we discovered this is one quick car, and not just because its 416 horsepower gets it up to speed tres rapide.
It sticks to corners. The huge brakes -- six pistons per caliper and 14.2-inch rotors up front -- encourage, even beg you to dive into the braking zone hot. The downshift throttle blip of the transmission will have you pulling off Schumacher-worthy shifts in no time. The eagerness of the V8 engine makes each corner exit a delight to the backside.
And then there's the sound. The quad-stacked exhaust system, with two exhaust tips on each side of the vehicle, combine with the intake roar of the dual-entry intake system to produce some of the sweetest automotive sounds this side of a Formula One race.
Calabogie is arguably the most challenging racetrack in Canada. A few corners have turn-in points that are before you can see the turn. You don't learn this track in a day. Yet despite the greenness of many of the scribes here, the IS F didn't end up in the weeds. Credit for that goes to the predictability of the car and the stickiness of its suspension.
This is Lexus's first attempt at a skunkworks project and a very good one at that.
Does it measure up to a BMW M3 or Audi RS4? Not quite. The steering needs to be a touch sharper and the balance just a bit tighter. For all its fine suspension work, the F still shows some tendency to understeer. Which is a good thing for road-going ability and for the average skill level of Canadian drivers. On the track, it means the F is held back from the benchmark just a bit.
But that it does what it does for $5k less than an M3 and $30k less than an RS4 -- and still rates highly on fuel economy -- puts it in remarkably good stead.
Lexus is expecting not only trade-up customers from the IS, but also some conquests from BMW and Audi. On the whole, I'd say their chances at that are pretty good. Sales are projected at 200 the first year, and they're halfway there already.
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
The Bottom Line
PRICE: $64,900, base, $68,500, Series II.
HIGHS: Outstanding acceleration, sticky handling, Lexus-esque refinement
LOWS: Could use crisper steering, tendency to understeer.
THE VERdict: A worthy rival to BMW's M3, Audi's RS4
The Specs
engine: 5.0-litre DOHC 32-valve V-8 with variable valve timing, direct ignition system, direct-injection
power: 416 horsepower @ 6,600 rpm
torque: 371 lb-ft. @ 5,200 rpm
transmission: eight-speed automatic sport direct shift with paddle controls
suspension: independent double-wishbone with gas shock absorbers, coil springs, stabilizer bar, anti-dive and anti-squat geometry (front); multi-link rear control arms, gas shock absorbers, coil springs, stabilizer bar (rear)
brakes: 14.2-inch front discs with six-piston Brembo calipers, 13.6-inch rear discs with two-piston Brembo calipers
steering: electric assist rack-and-pinion progressive-rate power steering
tires: P225/40R19 (front), P255/35R19 rear
length: 4,660 mm (183.5 in.)
width: 1,815 mm (71.5 in.)
height: 1,415 mm (55.7 in.)
wheelbase: 2,730 mm (107.4 in.)
seating capacity: four
curb weight: 1,715 kg (3,780 lb.)
fuel economy (Transport Canada): 13.8 l/100km (city), 8.5 l/100km (hwy), 11.0 l/100km (combined)
price: $64,400, base; $68,500, Series 2 package (incl. Mark Levinson Audio, in-dash six-disc DVD changer, 5.1 audio surround, Bluetooth capability, 14 speakers, DVD navigation system with backup camera)
warranty: four years, 80,000 km comprehensive; six-year, 110,000 km powertrain; eight years, 130,000 km major emission control components; six-year, unlimited kilometer corrosion perforation warranty; one-year, 32,000 km service adjustment, four-year Lexus roadside assistance.
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