The Last LFA Produced

Last Friday, the last Lexus LFA rolled off the line at the LFA Works within the Motomachi Plant in Toyota City. The car, which went into production on December 15, 2010, was limited to a run of 500 vehicles.

When the last one rolled off the line (“line” may be a bit of an exaggeration, inasmuch as this was a car that is as hand-crafted as it was manufactured by some 170 specialists in the plant), Haruhiko Tanahashi, LFA chief engineer, who started on the program in 2000, said, “I’ve lived and breathed supercars for the past decade. Specifically one supercar, LFA. Very few people have had the opportunity we had to create a world-class supercar from a blank sheet of paper.”

In addition to the sheet of paper, they also used an abundance of carbon fiber reinforced plastics. The LFA body-in-white is 65% composite. The remaining 35% are aluminum alloys.

It is estimated that if the car was aluminum-intensive rather than composite intensive, it would weigh 220 pounds more than the curb weight it has, 3,263 lb.

Given that it has a 553-hp, 4.8-liter naturally aspirated V10 engine, the LFA has 6 lb/hp, which helps explain why it goes from 0 to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and has a top speed of 202 mph.

Of course, as only 500 were built, none of us is likely to experience that.

Alas.  (Of course, as today is 12/21/12, the day the world is supposed to end, our opportunities to drive an LFA would be limited, anyway.)