Test drive Lexus RC F
The most powerful V8 in the history of the brand, the third in the list of fastest Lexus - find out what else the RC F can surprise ...
Lexus doesn't have a long history of sports car production. The first chapter was the SC model, which was produced from 1991 to 2010 and accelerated to 100 km / h in 5,9 seconds. The second is IS F (2008-2013), which conquered the first hundred in 4,8 seconds thanks to a 423-horsepower engine. The third is the LFA supercar (2010-2012), which had a 552-horsepower power unit and accelerated to 100 km / h in 3,7 seconds. The latest Lexus sports car to date is the RC F. We tried to understand what the fourth chapter in the annals of Lexus' achievements in the field of production of very fast cars turned out to be, and whether this car has a place in the city.
Strange affair. I'm sitting in a 500-horsepower sports car that costs $ 68. and I sneak at the speed of the stream in the same row. I would like to go more actively, and squeeze the accelerator at least half of the stroke, but I just can't get used to these endless forms. There are too many cars around me, and a wide black carbon fiber hood occupies the entire field of view from left to right. It seems to me that I'm not sitting in a short sports coupe, but in a sedan no less than a Mercedes E-class.
Plump forms of the console and an abundance of useless leather in a sports car crush with their deliberate massiveness, and poor visibility does not make it possible to fully control the situation around. In the city, this car simply cannot breathe - there is neither time nor space for a normal backache, and the box seems to be constantly confused in its endless eight gears, even in sport mode. The desired Newton meters come to the wheels at a time when you have already abandoned the maneuver and extinguish the temperament of the engine with strong brakes.
Get out of the cramped city! It is easier to breathe outside the Moscow Ring Road, and here I can finally give air to the mighty GXNUMX. The power unit understands correctly: three or four gears down, a hitch for a deep breath, and - walking like that - inspiringly temperamental acceleration with almost no breaks for sorting through the steps of the box.
Mockingly short 50-meter zones of intermittent markings of the first "concrete", where overtaking is formally allowed, seems to have been created especially for him. Overtaking itself here takes less time than subsequent braking already in its own lane - the shot at the oncoming one is so fast and swift that the steering wheel has to be held very tightly. One extra move, and this shaft of thrust will instantly take the car off the road. But if you figured out the sensations, you finally begin to enjoy this endless traction, and this wide hood, which is so majestic, solid and out of size, quickly adjusts into turns somewhere far ahead.
Technique
The RC F Coupe is fitted with a GS sedan front double wishbone suspension and an IS rear multi-link suspension. A distinctive feature of the car is a large number of aluminum parts. This metal, for example, is used to make the front suspension subframe, both front arms, the steering knuckle, the upper arm and the rear axle support. When creating the body of the sports car, high-strength grades of steel were used and laser-welded doorways were applied. The hood and the front cross member between the side members are made of aluminum.
The engine, familiar to Lexus fans from the top version of the LS sedan, is installed on the sports car. It received a more durable cylinder block, a Dual VVT-iE variable valve timing system and a combined fuel injection with two injectors. When driving at a constant speed, the vehicle can deactivate half of the cylinders to improve fuel efficiency. The RC F has a power of 477 hp, maximum torque of 530 Nm, accelerates to 100 km / h in 4,5 seconds and is capable of reaching a top speed of 270 kilometers per hour.
The car's braking system consists of six-piston calipers and Brembo ventilated discs (380 × 34 mm) at the front and four-piston calipers and Brembo ventilated discs (345 × 28 mm) at the rear.
At the sink, four hands wiped the car. I watched the live broadcast of this process on the screen in a cafe: the employees examined the nameplates, looked in turn into the passenger compartment and the trunk. “We made rubber blackening as a gift,” the shift leader told me. And then all the car wash workers went out into the street and watched the Lexus RC F, in which I was leaving. The car also made a splash on the road - I constantly noticed the curious looks of my neighbors in the traffic jam, I saw how pedestrians looked back at the sound of the engine. Even the motorcyclist, standing at the traffic light next to the Lexus RC F, gave a thumbs up.
There is no vulgarity or vulgarity in this attention. Driving a Lexus RC F feels like a person who made the right choice. However, if I chose the RC F, I would prefer a bright orange color. For the test, we got a white car with a carbon fiber hood, roof and trunk. The carbon package makes the RC F 9,5kg lighter and more than $ 1 more. When I first saw the combination of a white body and a carbon fiber hood, I thought the Lexus had been wrapped in plastic in a nearby garage. The unusual Japanese appearance of the car is quite independent without these additions.
Red leather interior, black Alcantara armrests with red stitching, sports buckets with steel inserts in the headrests and a dashboard that changes design depending on the selected mode - everything here screams that this is a supercar. And that's cool! But there is one problem - the touchscreen multimedia screen control panel. It's no better than the joystick that did the same job in older Lexus models. With 477 hp under the hood of a car, it is deadly to be distracted by switching the radio using the touchpad. Therefore, you can simply turn off the radio and even in traffic jams listen to the tantalizing roar of the engine. And when there is finally room for maneuver on the road, you can alternate driving modes.
Packages and prices
Lexus RC F is sold in Russia in two trim levels: Luxury and Carbon. The first option will cost $ 65. For this money, you can buy a car equipped with 494 airbags, dynamic traction control systems, hill start assist, tire pressure monitoring, emergency braking assistance, lane change assistant, 8-inch rims, an electric sunroof, leather interior with inserts made of silver fiberglass, LED taillights, headlight washers, rain and light sensors, cruise control, keyless entry, engine start / stop button, front and rear parking sensors, ventilated front seats, electric drive of all windows and mirrors, side memory settings mirrors and front seats, heated front seats, side mirrors, steering wheel and windshield, dual-zone climate control, DVD player, Mark Levinson audio system, rear view camera, color display, navigation system and stowaway.
The top version costs $ 67 and differs from the Luxury in the presence of darkened 256-inch wheels of a different design, a hood, roof and spoiler made of carbon (such a car is 19 kg lighter than its counterpart). At the same time, the Carbon package does not include a sunroof and a lane change assistance system.
The main competitors of the sports car in the Russian market are Audi RS5 coupe and BMW M4 coupe. The car from Ingolstadt has a 450-horsepower engine and accelerates to 100 km/h in 4,5 seconds. An all-wheel drive coupe starts at $64. However, for some options that are included in the Lexus as standard, you will have to pay extra here. So, a child seat mount will cost $079 hill start assist system - $59 lane change assistant - $59 cruise control - $407 auto-dimming mirrors - $199 engine start and stop button - $255 a Bang&Olufsen audio system for $455, a navigation system for $702,871, a rear-view camera for $1, and a Bluetooth module for $811. Thus, a version of the RS332 similar to the RC F will cost about $221.
The price tag for the BMW M4 Coupe with DCT starts at $ 57. Such a car has a power of 633 hp. and accelerates to 431 km / h in 100 seconds. But in the case of the Bavarian, you will have to pay even more for the options. A passenger airbag with a deactivation function will cost $ 4,1., LED headlights - $ 33., Comfortable keyless access - $ 1, dimmable mirrors - $ 581., Front and rear parking sensors - $ 491,742; electric front seats with memory settings for the driver's seat - $ 341., heated front seats - $ 624 steering wheel - $ 915 Harman Kardon Surround audio system - $ 308., connector for connecting an external device - $ 158, rear view camera - $ 907. , a navigation system - at $ 250., another $ 349. you need to pay for the front armrest. In total, the most affordable, at first glance, car in a configuration similar to the RC F will cost at least $ 2. If you add at least a sports suspension to this set ($ 073), then the price will already exceed $ 124.
With its carbon fiber hood, red racing buckets in place of the normal seats, and the accompaniment of a deafening roar, the Lexus RC F is the quintessence of posturing. And this, on the contrary, I already really like, because it takes about four and a half seconds to resist the genetic mechanisms that throw out all the Asianness mixed in us to the surface. Just as long as it takes RC F to reach the first hundred.
Lexus seems heavy, but this is a deceiving impression, because it maneuvers at speed easily, like the drawn sports cars in the first Need for Speed, which it strives to be like. And if you turn off all the systems that help the driver and pedestrians to survive, and switch to S +, painting the dashboard in menacingly sporty tones, then ... Oh, yes, we have not been to the track.
From recumbent to recumbent, from traffic light to traffic light: I never found out how he steers, how good his brakes are, and whether he really strives to jump out of the line as soon as you overdo it with gas. And both the city and the track are to him what a three-round exhibition fight against the best boxer from Ohio or another state where they don’t know how to fight is to Floyd Mayweather.
And one could say that the RC F was born for racing, if not for one thing: it is too comfortable for exclusively track sports cars. Lexus is Lexus, and in this case the GS is one of three models it was made from. Wide, imposing - its surroundings do not fit in with sports buckets, and therefore I do not quite understand the audience of the RC F. Such coupes - extremely sporty on the outside and comfortable on the inside - are buying walking collections of stereotypes about a midlife crisis. But RC F is so radically young in appearance that their mistresses seem to be under twenty.
History
In 2013, at the Tokyo Motor Show, the official premiere of the Lexus RC took place, which replaced the IS-based coupe in the company's model line. The car was built based on the LF-CC concept car, presented in 2012 in Paris. In January 2014, during the Detroit Motor Show, the world saw for the first time the most powerful V8-powered car in the company's history, the RC F.
In Japan, sales of RC series cars began in the second half of 2014, in the USA - in November 2014, in Russia - in September 2014 - immediately after the model was presented at MIAS-2014.
Currently, the RC F is the third fastest Lexus in the history of the brand. Moreover, only the LFA supercar and its special racing version LFA Nurburgrung edition are ahead of the sports coupe.
For this model, Lexus took all the best that he had: from the GS sedan - a front end with a spacious engine compartment; hard middle - from the IS convertible; rear bogie - from gambling IS-sedan. Oh yes, and the motor is from the flagship LS. Lexus sticks to classic values: a multi-liter naturally aspirated V8, rear-wheel drive, a high-end Mark Levinson audio system with old-fashioned buttons and a touching cover that covers the memory card slots.
Behind the unusual jagged lines and LED trims of the RC F, it's easy to see the classic sports coupe created to the envy of Maserati and Aston Martin. Lexus' sports history is only three chapters, the company is young, but behind it lies the power of Toyota technology.
We would like to express our gratitude to the Hals water sports base and the SportFlot club for their help in filming.
For a long time I can not find the button on the trunk lid and I open it with the key. Only to make sure that a significant part of the luggage space is occupied by the spare wheel. The front buckets are difficult to fold to let the passenger back, but the second row is surprisingly spacious (for a sports coupe, of course).
Huge ladles of bizarre shape - as if from a movie about aliens, but tailored quite to the human physique. And their red skin seems alive and full-blooded. The front panel is almost like on the IS sedan, but the RC F has its own and extremely stupid tidy: some numbers, arrows, diagrams are constantly flickering on it, as in the presentation of a business project. And keeping track of the allowed speed on a tiny speedometer is not an easy task.
Lexus' commitment to aspirated is admirable. Yes, her passion for turbocharging did not pass her by, and a two-liter turbo four is being installed on an increasing number of models - these are environmental requirements. But the rest of the Lexus engines are naturally aspirated, multi-cylinder. Like the one that accelerates the RC F to 100 km/h in just 4,5 seconds. The high-tech G3 can pretend to save fuel by working at light loads on the Atkinson cycle, but the more you give it gas, the more beautiful it is - up to more than seven thousand revolutions. The only pity is that the unnatural sound of the engine interferes with enjoying smooth traction. Why it was necessary to improve the sound of such an engine with the help of speakers is a mystery. It's not an mpXNUMX file.
And what is the button labeled TVD? Choosing a War Theater? Similar to Track mode for the race track, Slalom mode for streamers. This button controls the modes of the rear electronically controlled differential - for a car with a heavy engine, such a cornering assistant will not be superfluous. But on a normal road, you cannot feel the difference between the standard mode and the track and slalom mode. As well as not experiencing a third of the RC F.
He just begs to go to the race track. There is no need to keep the permitted speed, there are no speed bumps and tram tracks, on which the coupe shudders in surprise. This is where the RC-F is able to compete with BMW M-Sport, Jaguars and Porsches. And I wouldn't be surprised if this upstart doesn't give in to them. The city is the habitat of an ordinary RC, and its most basic motor will be behind the eyes.
