Next-gen Lexus F to be turbo

Enjoy those naturally aspirated, howling 5.0-litre V8 motors in Lexus’s RC F and upcoming GS F while you can, because they’ll be the last of their kind.

The deputy engineering chief of Lexus’s F division, Akio Iwasaki, yesterday confirmed the company was already investigating a turbocharged replacement for its atmo V8 engine.

“We are developing a turbo motor as a replacement for this one,” Iwasaki told motoring.com.au at the European launch of the new GS F yesterday.

“We are investigating it still, but it’s definitely going to be turbocharged… The problem is that [at the moment] turbocharged engines do not fit to one of our three brand philosophies, that of the Limitless Power Feeling,” the boffin stated.

While the Lexus’s go-faster brand has officially positioned itself as something below the more famous rivals from BMW’s M, Mercedes-Benz’s AMG and Audi’s quattro, a move to a turbo motor would allow F to deliver different states of tune to maintain its current positioning at one price point and go after the heavy hitting Germans further upstream.

Iwasaki would not confirm whether the company was leaning torwards a single or twin-turbo setup, nor whether the engine was likely to be a V6 or a smaller-capacity V8.

Fuel consumption and emissions were two of the keys to the move, expected to be in around five years. The new GS F uses 11.3L/100km on the ECE Combined cycle while the far more powerful, heavier, twin-turbo BMW M5 is already down to 9.9.

“It’s still very early in the investigation of which way [we will go],” Iwasaki said.

“The biggest question will be the feeling. Today, turbo gives the same drive feeling at 2000rpm and 5000rpm. We don’t want to do that.

“The Ferrari [488] shows that turbocharged engines don’t have to do it the same way to feel like a diesel. We are investigating that side,” the Lexus engineer stated.