Lexus GS F 2015 Review

When the GS F goes on sale in Australia next February, Lexus says it will have no genuine direct competitor.

It’s a car that takes the powertrain out of the RC F coupe and sedan-ifies it, which means there isn’t a turbo or supercharger to be seen.

The big picture is that Lexus has delivered a full-size five-seat rear-wheel drive sedan with a clever active differential that helps the car turn into corners as well as doing all it can to direct the 5.0-litre V8’s 351kW of power to the road on the way out of bends.

What’s more, it’s just about the last naturally aspirated V8 engine you’ll ever find in a large premium sedan, and it’s hard to argue with Lexus Australia head honcho Sean Hanley when he says that’s a good thing.

While he’s unsure of the final numbers, the GS F will end up somewhere within a cooee of $150,000, so when Hanley asserts that the GS F stands alone, he reckons without a certain German sports sedan from Bavaria that rhymes with Emm Tree. That one chimes in at about $153,000 (before you spend another $80,000 on options).

True, the GS body is a half-size up from the 3 Series and, in the F-ing chase for handling balance, it’s also about 20 percent stiffer than the donor chassis. It’s a long way from just having a new engine bolted in. The chassis is braced at seven points under the body, boasts triangular braces above and behind the front wheels and it even has stronger adhesives around the door openings.

All of this is done to give it a platform to manage both the power and weight of the big V8 up front and the overt stickiness of the 20-inch Michelin Pilot Super Sport boots that just seem to hold and hold and hold.

You could finish reading right there and you’d be about 80 per cent of the way to understanding the nub of the GS F. If that’s all you need to be happy, then toodlepip.

But, then, you wouldn’t find out that it eschews active suspensions or adjustable damping in favour of a single, one-setting-suits-all fixed rate for all the moving bits below decks. And that its geometry is completely different to the normal GS.

You wouldn’t know, either, that the rotary dial on the centre console tunnel could deliver an economy mode that adjusts the inlet valve timing by 40 degrees (using the Atkinson cycle), reducing the effective capacity by 800cc on a constant cruise. It has a standard setting, too, but also a Sports bit that cranks up the noise via dedicated speakers at either end of the cabin and also loosens the skid control’s grip on the funstrings. And then there’s a Sport+ setting that delivers a heavier, deliciously communicative feel from the steering rack.

You’d also not be aware of the full trickery of torque-vectoring differential, which is an open diff with electronically controlled planetary gear sets on either side. And you can adjust the way it works, too, between the comfort-oriented, the hard-yawing and the fast-but-stable edges of its cleverness envelope.

You’d be unaware, too, of just how bloody good it is, and how limited at the same time.
The world is now accustomed to their sports sedans delivering monster punch at 2000rpm, at the latest. Leave it in a tall gear and the 32-valve V8 can sometimes feel like it’s waiting too long for the fireworks, even when almost all of the 530 Isaacs are bringing their muscle at 4000rpm.

The fireworks come, sure, but they come later, which means you’ll have to work the paddle shifters for the eight-speed Aisin automatic transmission to keep it in the right gear.

It’s heavy, too, which exacerbates its torque shortfall to the compressed air-loving Germans. It’s not the first premium sports sedan to that party, mind you, but its 1825kg that can be felt when you’re at commuting speeds and feel compelled to jump into a hole in the other lane, or when you’re dropping the anchor, or when you change direction on a racetrack.

Or, more obviously, when you fill it up. The 66-litre tank gets drained at the NEDC rate of 11.3L/100km, but the official figure around town is a scarier 16.8. Both numbers rely heavily on the thing not straying from the Atkinson cycle-part of its software. Reality suggests something even thirstier.

Some fuel tanks are more fun to drain than others, though, and so it is with the GS F.
You can be caught wondering what the fuss is about at low speeds, or when you’re just cruising. Lexus insists the car is all about character, but it’s hard to initially see that. The immediate impression is that the sonorous V8 delivers 90+ per cent of the character and the rest of the car is a delivery system for it.

Compress the springs harder in corners, the throttle pedal deeper into the carpet and the spine deeper into the seat and the entire car comes together more seamlessly and coherently.
Find the right road, in the right weather, and instead of thinking the engine is the main source of the GS F’s character, you find a mass of mechanical and electrical stuff working hard together for a common goal. And that goal is to make you feel good and to make bends pass as seamlessly and easily as possible, while making the driver look good.

It doesn’t start with the engine, though. This “altogetherness” starts with the differential. It’s so clever that it can make the Lexus swing into a corner far harder than the front tyres would ordinarily want to, by fiddling with the torque flow individually to the rear wheels. It’s a system that works when even when there’s no power being pushed through the diff, too, and then it works constantly to keep everything stable mid-corner before working again on the way out, as all the power arrives.

It’s cheaper, lighter and more entertaining than moving to all-wheel drive, especially when it’s working in concert with that operatic engine.

You’ll drive it in Sport mode most of the time, because that’s where the noise is at its best, yet it can get a bit droning and monotonous during freeway or urban work and, besides, it makes the transmission just a bit too enthusiastic with its downshift patterns.

That all works well when you’re pushing harder, because the transmission’s ideas about when it should shift are pretty well in line with what you’d be doing yourself anyway, but it’s too energetic for urban serenity.

Any doubts you have about the engine’s torque shortfall relative to the turbo terrors are erased once you’ve found the road that lets you keep the revs above 4500rpm.

It all comes together then, with the 5.0-litre howling up to 7300rpm time and again, with the instant response from the engine allowing the car to be played with mid-corner in a way the stop-go turbos can’t match anymore.

It’s incredibly accurate to throttle inputs and it’s fast, without being frighteningly fast, and the sweetness of its top-end power delivery makes it addictively enticing.

Sure, it’s probably slower on any given piece of road than a turbo M3, but it’s hardly the point. The GS F is more than fast enough to get into legal strife, hitting 100km/h in 4.6 seconds and whipping across the quarter mile in 12.8, but it’s more about how it makes you feel as a driver. And it makes you feel good.

With its 12.3:1 compression ratio, it’s a heavily oversquare engine (94mm bore plays 89.5mm stroke), and that’s how it feels, willingly and cheerfully playing all day at the upper reaches, without ever breaking into the harshness of overstrain. It revs to 7300rpm but it feels like it revs to 8500rpm, and it’s smooth and linear all the way.

The rest of the chassis also shines more the harder you make it work. The brakes are strong, with six-piston monobloc calipers (questionably painted orange for the Australian market) clamping to 380mm discs up front, and they are progressive without feeling soft. Nicely judged.

The entire chassis package, with double wishbones at the front-end and a multi-link rear, just works and works and works. It’s not as though the car feels like it’s a natural athlete, but it feels like all of its components are working with everything they’ve got to deliver the same result, and you come away respecting it for that.

It’s capable of carrying high mid-corner speeds, but never risks feeling nervous or fiddly or treacherous in doing it. You can make it flow between apexes, you can change styles and make it snap one way or the other, you can either squeeze or smash the throttle. It doesn’t seem to matter to the car, and it and its gizmos will find a way to work to your style regardless.

The only real issue here is that you can’t mix and match the chassis tune settings, like you can with most German cars. It’d be nice to have the engine note from the Sport mode, the transmission a touch calmer in Normal and the richer steering feel of Sport+ at the same time, but you can’t.

Besides going around corners fluently, the GS F also manages bumps well, corners flat on its springs and behaves like an adult playing children’s games. It thinks its way through the tough spots, rather than trying to outmuscle them, which is odd for a muscle car.

There are forged BBS alloy wheels down at the coalface, wrapped up with 255/35 ZR19 Michelin Pilot Super Sport rubber at the front and 275/35 ZR19s at the rear. They’re a great choice, because they bite and bite, but they’re gently progressive when they eventually let go. The key word, though, is “eventually”. They’re also the only tyres specified with the GS F, because the car is tuned around them.

The interior is curious mix of expensive and short cut, with far too much of the switchgear looking at least a class below premium and the multimedia scroller feeling over sensitive (it can be changed, apparently) and fiddly to use. There are lower-dash plastics that are anything but premium and then nicely upholstered console pieces that don’t seem to need upholstering.

The instrument cluster is fully digital, changing as you move from eco mode to normal to sport and it also changes colour on the way through, and Australian cars all get a standard head-up display. The 12.3-inch multimedia display is high on the dash, but integrated into it, rather than standing proud of it.

The V8 isn’t the only serious piece of noisemaking in the GS F, because all the Australian cars score the 17-speaker Mark Levinson surround sound audio system.

The seats, too, are supportive and good looking, with plenty of lateral support even in the most aggressive driving. They’re also useful in the rear, where there is a surprising amount of legroom, and even the 520-litre boot is usefully laid out.

This is a strong effort from Lexus, and it’s stronger the deeper you dig. If they can bring enough attention to it, early enough, only the lack of low-end torque in around-town conditions and some interior design shortcuts and quirks will hold it back.

The rest of it is a complex collection of ideas and executions, all lined up together to make driving fast feel fun and simple. And what’s wrong with that?

2016 Lexus GS F pricing and specifications:
Price: $150,000 (estimated)
Engine: Naturally-aspirated 5.0-litre V8