Toyota just debuted three new Gazoo Racing prototypes, the GR GT road car and the GR GT3 race car. Plus, the reborn LFA. According to Toyota, the expected launch timing of the first two is still a year out. Beyond that, probably in 2028, we’ll see the new LFA. It won’t have a V-8 hybrid, like the GR GT and the race car, but will be a pure EV. There are a few reasons why that latter reality matters. While the U.S. has just relaxed emissions standards, the rest of the globe have not.
When you’re catering to the super-rich, it’s pretty dumb to only think of a single market. Ditto, thinking that just because U.S. standards on emissions have slackened, that Toyota/Lexus/GR/Century brands could possibly be developed without hybridization and electrification as the near- and long-term goals. Just witness the clear competition. It’s not Ford’s Mustang GTD—it’s Mercedes-AMG’s CONCEPT AMG GT XX.
But Lexus hasn’t consistently offered anything close to supercar or even GT cred. The operative word there is consistently. Note, for instance, the waxing and waning of anything to rival BMW’s M Division and AMGs littering the Mercedes lot. Then see that Lexus’s RC and RC-F are toast at the end of this model year. Arguably, Lexus’s half-toe-in-the-performance pond has been the brand’s biggest problem. Now, maybe, at long last, Toyota’s going all in. Here’s why that could be exceptionally good news for Lexus.
Toyota Urged To ‘Go All Out’ With New GR GT, GR GT3, Lexus LFA Concept
Expect at least 641 horsepower from the all-aluminum, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive GR GT road car and GT3 race car when they arrive ‘around 2027.’
Lexus Is Slaying It—In The U.S.
Lexus is not hurting. This year, they’re squarely in third place in sales behind Mercedes-Benz in second and BMW, which is a runaway category winner for luxury cars in 2025. Cadillac is trailing in fourth place, and nobody else is remotely in the conversation.
But in 1989, Lexus didn’t exist. Since their debut, from cologne to clothing, there are very few luxury brands that have performed better. You could argue they could stand pat and be fine. Maybe.
The Number One Lexus Problem
Globally, Mercedes-Benz and BMW are still the luxury automakers to beat. They’ve built their respective houses on performance, even if nobody buys a G Class thinking about track days. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the buyer knows Benz’s F1 team is called Mercedes-AMG and sees that on Netflix’s “Drive to Survive.” Now, as Gazoo Racing enters as a full partner in Formula 1, you can darn well bet the marketing pros at Lexus will hype that everywhere possible, from TV to TikTok.
The Sticky Part
Toyota put out two videos on YouTube last week. We embedded one in our piece about the GR GT, but the shorter one, just below, has Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda talking about taking the original LFA to the Nürburgring.
“When I first went to Nürburgring, people looked at me as if to say, ‘Toyota could never build a car like that.’ I believe the Lexus LFA was born from that frustration.” —Akio Toyoda, Chairman, Toyota
LFA Didn’t Filter Into Every Lexus
The LFA was tremendous—and siloed. Arguably, that 2011 effort garnered Toyota and Lexus respect they hadn’t received previously. But Lexus hasn’t been synonymous with performance because F-Sport or just hyphenated-“F” has been ill-defined. Even the outgoing RC-F, for all its track pretensions, is slower than a similarly-sized Audi RS3. And sticking with Audi RS, or BMW M, the cognoscenti know what those labels mean.
Audi told me RS and S models comprise as much as a quarter of sales of some models, in part because (mostly) Audi is baking in actual performance, not just “badge engineering.” Lexus, by contrast, has never consistently offered tangible and, dare I say, hair-on-fire “stonk.” The GR Corolla is where that bar needs to be—and what needs to seep into Lexus DNA.
How GR Could Be Game Changing
It’s interesting that the LFA will be fully electrified. It signals a global approach. Even though Lexus’s chief market is still the U.S.A. According to reporting by The Drive, Lexus, not Toyota, will be responsible for retailing the GR GT and LFA cars. That’s good, because the price alone will dictate that those supercars will need to be handled by Toyota’s luxury division. But this doesn’t solve the bigger issue, which is that whether you’re talking NX, RX, TX, GX, or LX—the bulk of what Lexus sells—these crossovers don’t scream performance. Yes, Lexus does sell F Sport Performance versions of some of these, but this isn’t analogous to AMG or M levels of capability. The IS 500 is also disappearing, which we’ve probably been looking at all wrong.
GR Inside
If Lexus will sell future LFAs and GR GTs, they’ll almost for certain sell future GR-badged Toyota/Lexus models. If you think the GR Corolla is the “baddest” Toyota can do, you’re almost surely wrong. GR-tuned Lexuses might begin with the all-new ES sedan that will go on sale this coming year as both an EV and a hybrid.
Starting Mild
It’s rumored Toyota wants to “GR” the Camry, and the outgoing Camry TRD was a shockingly capable stealth sports sedan—I drove it on the track and was thoroughly and happily surprised. The Camry and Lexus ES share a platform, and a more rigid, faster Camry GR and ES GR would be a “starter-kit” way for Lexus to incorporate the label. Obviously, for Lexus to get this right, they have to push more deeply. It’s probable Lexus starts slow, though. Toyota is a deeply conservative company. But as they pull the RC and IS off the showroom, you can bet they’re not done. Their investment in GR as a division—and in racing, period—suggests a multi-year push.
TopSpeed’s Take
Lexus, far more than Toyota, really needs to be associated with track-proven success. This would also be a tremendous conduit and bridge for Lexus sales. If you look at Toyota’s support of GR Corolla customers and how that’s brought in legions of Toyota fans, you can definitely see how Lexus could build something similar. But the competition is fierce. Genesis is now going in this direction with Magma. And if you think BMW is hot now, just wait for the full brunt of the Neue Klasse design ethos to land with M cars.
Toyota is the richest of all these brands. Arguably, they also have the deepest engineering resources, too. None of that matters, however, if they don’t make GR a household luxury label.
Source: TheDrive