The Lexus GS F is a car BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi all sorely wished never existed. Before Lexus, these three German companies held a complete monopoly on high-performance four-door sports sedans.
Nowadays, every car maker and their grandmother has an offering in this category. While that's not entirely on the back of Lexus, the GS F stuck it to the Germans in a manner we won't soon forget. Not that it would be able to do so for long, because as German competitors gained more and more performance, the Lexus carried on for years with basically the same power plant.
Sadly though, Lexus axed the GS F alongside the rest of the fourth-generation GS range. That may not elicit as many tears as the death of Saab or Pontiac, but it does herald a but of an evolutionary step backward to a time the Germans were in complete control of this auto segment.
Lexus fans and M5 haters alike, get ready to break out the tissues. We're taking a post mortem deep dive into the Lexus sedan that stuck it to the Germans for the better part of 10 years.
A Sensible Four-Door Lexus On Steroids
The standard fourth-generation Lexus GS was a fine car in its own right, but for all of its sensible reliability, it was about as interesting as watching paint dry. So people were intrigued, to say the least when Toyota decided to breathe some new performance into it with the GS F when it launched in 2016.
There was no mistaking the GS F for a normal Lexus car, where most Lexus' you're bound to run across blend into a crowd so seamlessly it actually dissuaded you from staring at it, the large angled grill almost beckoned people to come take selfies with it in grocery store parking lots.
The message then was clear, Lexus intended to show the Germans their time holding the performance sedan market in their clutches were over. But that was all assuming the GS F had what it takes under the hood.
V8 Power With Japanese Precision And Reliability
The best way to endear a car to the American public is to fit it with a thumping great V8. The five-liter V8 in the Lexus GS F certainly looks the part in the flesh and on paper. Metallic blue painted intake manifold and all.
There's more than enough power on hand from this naturally aspirated powerplant, 460 horsepower and 390-pound feet of torque are the official numbers put out by Lexus, and user feedback appears to validate this. All that grunt is fed out of a quad exhaust tip arrangement which some people love and others despise. The exhaust note that comes out of the GS F is delightfully in between the growl of an AMG V8 and bassy almost like the Coyote V8 in the Mustang GT.
A Mixed Bag In The Cabin
Lexus has been criticized in the past for failing to keep up with trends in interior design and infotainment technology. While the GS F does address some of these concerns, others still remain. Fit and finish is still vintage Lexus quality in spite of the slightly outdated feel. Alcantara, leather, and soft-touch plastics are fitted at every common touchpoint and make for a refined and comfortable interior.
The same can't be said for the car's unintuitive, confusing, and needlessly complicated infotainment system Lexus dubs the Remote Touch Interface. This system utilized an integrated control stick beneath the center console which acts the same as a laptop track pointer. It was clunky, and necessitated lots of needless scrolling and searching for normally mundane things like the radio and the satellite navigation.
Simply Not Enough To Keep Up With BMW And AMG
With all the GS F's good sides and flaws, its sticker price of around 90 thousand dollars is frankly a little bit absurd. And as M5's E-Class AMG's and Audi RS6's got progressively more powerful, luxurious, and faster. the big Lexus floundered for the remainder of its production run.
A Revival On The Used Market
The GS F was a complete financial failure for Lexus and Toyota and was discontinued along with the rest of the fourth-generation GS lineup in August of last year. As pathetic as it was in comparison to its German rivals by the end of its production run. The possibility exists that the GS F can have a bit of a revival on the used market. Depreciation is bound to hit the GS F's price tag like a ton of bricks, don't be surprised if there are deals on them for as low as 35 grand before too long. If that comes to pass, it might be the first car in history to make more sense buying it used than it would be buying it brand new.
Via: Doug DeMuro, Lexus.com