To the eagle-eyed, the new Lexus Sports Concept might look familiar. And I don’t mean to those who’ve pored over the many spy photos and renderings of both the upcoming road and racing versions. This new car—which we and others have been calling the LFR—owes a lot to the LC and LFA, sure, but also the Electrified Sports concept from 2021.
But this new car will have gas power. So what happened to the EV?
The Lexus Electrified Sport debuted in December 2021, when Toyota unveiled a number of EV concepts. Its long-hood, short-deck proportions scream front-engine rear-drive sports car, but Lexus said that this was a pure EV, with solid-state batteries promising a 435-mile range and a sub-2-second 0-60 mph sprint.
Since 2021, however, popular sentiment around electric cars has shifted. Their growth has slowed, and many automakers—Toyota included—have scaled back their EV ambitions.
Photo by: Lexus
Photo by: Brian Silvestro / Motor1
Back then, Lexus did say it would build an EV sports car. Akio Toyoda himself said, “Lexus will develop a next-generation battery EV sports car that inherits the driving taste, or the secret sauce, of the performance cultivated via the development of the LFA.”
As of now, the company hasn’t said whether it’s cancelled this project entirely. But there’s no doubt that the new Sports Concept uses many of the same design cues as the 2021 EV.
The overall proportions are the same, but Lexus carried specific details forward, too: The largely open front intake with a split in the center; the LFA aping C-pillar and cutaways in the rear bodywork; the full-width light bar at the back; the cutaways in the hood; the double-bubble roof; and more.
The two cars are not identical, but they are very much cut from the same cloth.
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Source: Brian Silvestro / Motor1
We know that this new Lexus concept previews a production car that will have a Toyota twin. In 2022, Toyota debuted the GR GT3 concept, a low-slung, front-engine, rear-drive race-car design that very much has an engine up front (likely, a twin-turbo V-8). An official confirmed a road-going Lexus version of the car in 2022, with the Lexus version expected for the US, and the Toyota version hitting other markets.
A Lexus spokesperson declined to comment on what, if any, relationship the two concepts have. If you’ll allow us a bit of speculation, it’s not hard to imagine Toyota cancelling a Lexus EV sports car, since there doesn’t seem to be a market for such a thing.
But with the Electrified Sports concept, Lexus at least had a good design basis for the internal-combustion sports car that will eventually come. Plus, there’s a possibility the production road car could be a hybrid of some sort to compete with new, electrified offerings from AMG, Porsche, and Corvette.
But for now, at least, it appears an all-electric Lexus sports car will have to wait.