Lexus LC500 Limited Edition Review

A return to performance driving

The Lexus LC500 Limited Edition marks my return to performance cars. It was not only the first one I drove following four months of lockdown, but also the first I had driven at any real pace after surgery. Surgery that meant losing my left testicle for Big Scary Reasons.

That may be oversharing, but it is relevant, honestly. My normal preference in cars is for “tough”. The narrower the bucket seat - and the more restrictive its track-spec harness - the better. Likewise, my ideal number of development laps around a 21-km German toll road is “lots”. Strong air con and a good stereo are welcome, but certainly not essential.

Sadly, my priorities have - temporarily - shifted. And if any car seems squarely targeted at what my nether regions and I have wanted recently, it is the Lexus LC: a car whose supercar looks conceal a composed GT.

In standard form, it is offered in two versions, their prices separated by only a couple of hundred pounds and starting at roughly £80,000 each. There is the LC500, powered by a wonderfully old-school 5.0-litre V8, and the LC500h, which heads in an entirely different direction with a V6 petrol-electric powertrain. At the risk of sounding predictable, we have always strongly favoured the former. It also happens to be the less expensive option, despite its 464bhp being considerably more than the hybrid produces.

That V8 is the engine fitted here, in a specification called Limited Edition that costs £90,425. It gives the green-and-tan combination that car bores like us endlessly insist is “what you want” a distinctive interpretation.

Its exterior wears a gorgeous shade that alters with the weather, though beneath typical British cloud it merges into the hedgerows in a manner that shy bairns such as me adore. The cabin, meanwhile, uses a Seventies-style brown which suits the LC500’s wild collection of angles and slashes unexpectedly well.

Lexus LC500 Limited Edition cabin and technology

Taken together, these details may offer a useful distraction from a car that was crying out for its facelift - since revealed - in places you would not necessarily expect. For all the technical theatre of the digital instruments awakening when you press the starter, and the rev counter spinning beautifully yet pointlessly out from the centre as you navigate the trip computer, there is no smartphone connectivity. That leaves you reliant on Lexus’s own infotainment system. That would be acceptable were it not operated through an occasionally - ahem - ball-busting haptic trackpad. It is cheerfully esoteric in the traditional Japanese sports-car manner, but painfully awkward to use until you have learned its ways.

My earlier encounter with the LC500 came at a soaking-wet Knockhill Circuit, where it was so exuberant that I climbed out with biceps like Popeye after his spinach - you can see Chris Harris demonstrating what I had hoped to achieve below. On dry roads, inevitably, it is nowhere near as unhinged, acting much more in keeping with its GT remit.

Indeed, once you have lowered yourself into the seat - somewhat more cautiously than usual - and stopped being misled by its outlandish bodywork, there are plenty of signs that set expectations correctly.

Lexus LC500 Limited Edition: GT rather than sports car

Although the automatic gearbox has ten (!) ratios, they are unusually long. Second is therefore the sole gear in which you can take the V8 to its glorious crescendo while staying within UK speed limits. That makes clear that this is emphatically not a sports car, long before its two-tonne kerb weight and sometimes unruly body control have their say.

Five driving modes are available, from Eco through to Sport+, yet surgery or no surgery, I think you will soon leave it in Comfort. The car plainly has an animalistic streak if you seek it out, but I suspect you will choose the shorter, more straightforward route more regularly than the long, scenic one. Its soothing character will win you over more often than you will select the serious settings and tell it what to do.

Perhaps the characteristically Japanese approach to the facelift - leaving the styling alone while forensically re-engineering what lies beneath, trimming a little mass from suspension components, making the gearbox react more sharply and coaxing more sound from the V8 that stays muted unless you thrash it - will turn it into more of a sports car.

What I found myself wanting, though, was a steroidal LC F, taking the aggression Lexus permits in the LC500’s sportier modes and increasing it to the nth degree. A mini-LFA far closer to my customary, mildly crotch-pummelling tastes; a performance car with a proper pair of… you know what. But I promise you can manage perfectly well without them, too. Not merely because this soft green-on-tan thing proves it.

7/10