Lexus's Fast and Furious IS-F

Lexus has delivered a growling, 416-horsepower muscle car that would likely shock the brand's traditional owners into apoplexy

Stereotypes, they say, have their basis in fact. Well, at least in the automobile world, there's some truth to that. Take Lexus, the luxury arm of Toyota , which has a reputation for building beautifully appointed, bulletproof products that seem predestined for the sort of aging, affluent buyers who don't really enjoy driving all that much.

So what to make of the new Lexus IS-F? Yep, it's well executed, from nose-to-tail, with near-flawless attention to detail and the absolutely precise fit-and-finish you'd expect from the Japanese marque. But boring and bland? Not on your life.

The original IS, launched in 2000, was intended to serve as a hip, sporty and affordable alternative to more mainstream models, like the Lexus LS. But in a segment where everyone benchmarks the BMW 3-Series, the IS fell short, even with the second-generation update, introduced two years ago.

Rather than trying to gain ground, and credibility, by slowly honing in on the base BMW 328, the new Lexus IS-F takes aim at the toughest challenge of them all, the German maker's vaunted M3. What Lexus has delivered is a growling, 416-horsepower muscle car that would likely shock the brand's traditional owners into apoplexy.

"The IS-F is likely to represent everything you didn't think we were—thank goodness," declared Jim Farley, who until recently headed the Lexus division, (and who put in his last public appearance at the IS-F launch before unexpectedly taking the top marketing job at Ford Motor Co.).

In today's alphanumeric soup, every automaker seems to glom onto some letter to represent the high point of their engineering prowess: M for BMW, V Cadillac, R for Jaguar. Considering our less than stellar school days, the letter, F, still carries some painful overtones, but for Lexus, it seems, F stands for "fast," "furious," and "fun."

The letter has been used on internal projects designed to inject some of those factors into the brand DNA, and it's surfaced not only in the IS-F concept and production car, but also the exotic LF-A supercar concept.

While Lexus has yet to create a full brand-within-a-brand, like BMW's M, or Mercedes' AMG, the IS-F is more than just a high-powered makeover of the mainstream IS250. In a company that normally adheres to rather strict development protocols, the new sedan burst forth from what Farley described as "a skunkworks team of car fiends."

Chief among them was Yukihiko Yaguchi. He originally proposed the idea of a muscle car when the Lexus brand was getting set to go global, earlier in the decade. And he was promptly told, "no." But Yaguchi decided to keep the project going—in secret—assigning it "to myself, and working on it in my spare time." By the spring of 2004, he was far enough along, and confident enough of the results, to bring the idea up again. This time, he got the okay, and went from being the IS-F's "secret advocate to its chief engineer."

Even then, where a typical Toyota and Lexus project might have 1000 or more engineers and support staff assigned, the IS-F had to make due with anywhere from 100 to 300, over the course of its development, supplementing the effort with the help of the company's racing arm, TRD, and its Toyota Technocraft division.

So what did they come up with?

Let's start off with some of the vital statistics: under the hood, you'll find a 5.0-liter V-8 making an impressive 416 horsepower and 371 lb-ft of torque. That's a full 76 ponies more than the old M3 and two more than the '09 model. Purists might growl, but all that muscle is piped through the industry's first eight-speed direct-shift auto/manual transmission, with steering wheel-mounted paddle shifters. The fastest car ever delivered by Lexus, it's capable of hitting 60 in 4.6 seconds and topping out at an electronically regulated 168 mph.

The other part

Of course, those numbers tell only part of the story.

At first glance, you'll recognize the basic IS shape, sleek and reasonably attractive, it's one of the first models to feature the so-called L-finesse styling cues that are fast becoming the brand's visual identity.

With the IS-F, a number of changes have been made, some, such as the big V-8 badge on the hood, to cosmetically distinguish the car from the standard IS 250 and 350, but most for functional purpose, such as the sportier and more aggressive grille, with lower vents to enhance engine breathing, and matching vents for brake cooling. Flared wheel arches house the oversized tires needed to pump all that extra power to the pavement.

The IS-F has been lowered 0.8 inches. The front track was widened an inch, while the rear track is actually 0.4 inches narrower. The body is, overall, 0.6 inches wider. The total length of the car has been stretched 3.3 inches, to 183.5 inches.