"The RC F is a high-performance coupé of the Lexus brand, announced at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show. The letter 'F' for Lexus cars denotes the high performance version of the car, much like BMW's 'M' cars, Mercedes' 'AMG', Audi's 'RS', and Honda's 'Type R' monikers. The RC F's main competitor is the BMW M4, which has defined and dominated the segment by and large. You can distinguish an RC F from a base RC by the additional vents aft the front tyres, extra hood vents, and an active rear wing. Being the smallest, most nimble car in Lexus' lineup and with their biggest, most powerful in-house built NA V8 engine, the RC F is the sportiest model Lexus offers today."
Esther the editor lowers the clear folder she was just reading from and turns her head to look at me. I remain motionless from when I had first laid eyes on this week's car, with what I think and hope is a blank expression, but is most likely in reality, a disapproving, disgusted scowl.
"Did I get all that right?", asks she.
"That last part, I have doubts of."
She hastily flips through the corners of the papers in her folder, pulling some out partially by the corners, stuffing them back as quickly, trying to find something.
"You're right, don't worry", I quickly reassure her, realising I should limit my sarcasm around someone taking their first steps to learn more about cars. "It's just... Lexus? Sporty? In the same sentence? Pah. What a joke."
She gives me a confused look with a matching tilt of her head.
"Look, do your notes say how much it weighs?"
"1,790kg, or 3,946lbs", she quickly and tactfully replies, reading off her notes for the exact figures.
"Are you fucking kidding me?! Let me see that!"
I half snatched, half received the personal folder of Esther from her relenting grasp. As my eyes scoured through the taverns of material on the car, my eyelids widened enough to just about accommodate three eyeballs each, and my mouth warped into a mortifying hexagon pinched in from the sides. I simply could not believe what the photocopied brochures of the car, along with the printed out screenshots of the specs from Lexus' website are claiming: a kerb mass of nearly 1.8 tons. I know I was asking the question of the mass of the RC F as a setup to explain why it couldn't possibly be a sports car, or even a sportY car, but the colossal figures took even me by surprise.
"HOW is this car so heavy?! What does it even have?!", I exclaim, clumsily going through every page of research material Esther has gathered, messing them up and ruffling a few pages in the process. Aside from a 5 litre V8 sitting up front, nothing else jumped out at me; no AWD, no hybrid systems, no 57 speed DCT gearboxes, no sunroof, no massage seats... not even rice cookers in the centre console. What gives?
"Are you okay?", Esther asks, slowly, but forcefully retrieving her folder from my fumbling hands, as though asking her notes the question instead of me.
"I... I might not know as much about cars as you think I do", I reply back in a haze of self doubt. "Is this... what passes for 'sporty' nowadays? Back then for 1.8 tons you could have a freaking TANK in a Volvo Estate! Am I really that old and out of touch?"
"You're... 26."
"I feel old."
"The median age of RC F owners is-"
"Thank you Esther very well done 100% flying colours", I shot up my posture to brisk walk over to the driver's side door of this JDM spec RC F. At my insistence, this week's car was handed over to some intern at COTW, to be driven and delivered to me at an inn. This way, I didn't have to meet the owner of the car, and was more free to take a verbal dump all over it if need be, as I am already liberally doing. That's right: I'm paying extra money to not have to interact with other people. Admit it: you would too if you could, even without the "big 19" messing everything up.
Fancy, high contrast, multi layered paintjob aside, one could almost swear this was some high end rental car with how... hateful, it looks. This tarted up Toyota looks fine from just about every angle, except any that involve the front end. If the Germans have defined this market segment and have dominated it for about a decade by the time the RC F came out, you'd think Toyota would've learned a thing or two about discreet, subtle styling. I've said it once, but it bears repeating every time: I hate the front grille of Lexus cars. It's way too in-your-face and obnoxious even in their smallest coupé, so I'd only recommend you take a look at their SUVs where the grilles are scaled up if you have a burning desire to become legally blind via post-traumatic psychogenic blindness.
Things aren't much more pleasant on the inside. This being a modern Lexus, it comes with their patented, trademark, god awful, counter-intuitive, way too slow and way too attention demanding remote touch interface thing, which has you controlling a screen beside the dash with a laptop-like touchpad, when every automaker and even laptops have since adopted touchscreens. Needless to say, this system is entirely inoperable when you're piloting the vehicle, and is much slower to use in comparison to a touchscreen even when the car is stopped. I was flabbergasted to learn that carbon ceramic brakes weren't even an option on the "standard" RC F. I'm sorry, but this is a 1.8 ton car capable of a claimed top speed of 270km/h (168mph), and you won't even give me an option for ceramics? I have to get the "Track Pack" edition of this higher performance version of the RC just to have the esteemed privilege of having the OPTION of carbon ceramics? Why would you not give me that option? Is it really that hard to swap some bolt on parts on the RC F? Is non sporty people's money not as good as sporty people's money? I'm sorry Lexus, but do you want me to die in this?
A rant that was at the tip of my tongue and fingertips last week is my utter hatred for active rear wings, and my dam of complaints can't handle two straight weeks of pressure. Am I the only one that finds active wings stupid? In the RC F, it comes up at a rather odd speed of 83km/h (51mph). Why would you need to retract it below that speed? How much drag is it causing at speeds that low? I'd argue the mass of all the hydraulic systems and the power it saps from the engine to operate it far outweigh any benefit retracting the damn things would provide. It's so stupid. All the "hardcore track performance" versions of cars with active wings ditch them in favour of fixed ones, like the 911 GT2, Aventador SV, or even Lexus' own LFA Nürburgring Package. Hell, the Track Edition of the RC F has a fixed wing. I can understand if that's too glaring for a sensible, discreet performance sedan, but why put a minuscule hydraulic wing in its place? How much downforce is that tiny thing going to generate for me? If it's there only to look cool, I find it has the opposite effect of showing that I don't have the best version of the car. And besides, how cool is a rear wing that only goes up like 2 mm? My tiny little Asian organ goes up farther than that.
Yep, that's the active rear wing, fully deployed.
The centred tachometer in this car is apparently an influence from the company's legendary LFA supercar... come on. At this point, I can't be the only one sick of Lexus referencing the LFA at every opportunity, can I? It's ten years old at this point, and Lexus has yet to produce another V10 car, or even something that's remotely sporty. The LFA being their only standout achievement however, you can really sense the desperation in trying to harken back to it. A central, round tach being hailed as a further refinement of the LFA's? Are we being serious? My 2002 Viper has a centre round dash. Is that influenced by the LFA, too? Of all the things to inherit from the LFA, why not the actual, important bit of "telling me which gear I'm in"? This stupid thing has eight - count them - EIGHT forward gears, operated by paddles. I'm sorry, but how the FUCK am I supposed to know what gear I'm in without a stick shift if you don't tell me? Is that not important information? Is somehow telling me I'm in "Drive" more important than which gear I'm in? Even my RX-8 with a stick shift tells me the gear number I'm in. I KNOW I'm in drive! How? BECAUSE THE CAR IS MOVING FORWARD.
Seriously, who needs this? Why does it do this? Who designed it to do this? Did ANYONE test drive this? Who greenlit this?
Seeing that the car is in "Normal" mode, I reach down to the knob in the centre console to try the other modes to see how the RC F's other modes changes its handling, only to receive a gentle slap on my wrist.
"Don't."
"Why?"
"Because", she replies looking away, with a tone that signifies she's more than had her fill of frustrations, and then withdraws her hand, trusting I got the message. "Just review the car as-is, okay? I'll research about the modes and tell you later."
I remain silent, the frustration of wasting a second week in a row in crippled car, and having to regurgitate what I'm told from a book was giving me unpleasant reminders of my time in school.
"I take it you don't like this car?"
"That obvious, huh?"
"You're an easy read."
"You're not."
She stays quiet, either not wanting to respond, or admitting that she's hiding a few things from me.
I decide to change the topic. "From one Lexus in nearly two years to two Lex...ii, in three weeks? Are we being bribed?"
"Yes."
"...what?", whatever flow of the conversation might have had up to this point breaks, along with my voice. I wasn't expecting something so... improper, or blunt, to come out of her polite and politically correct mouth. She's usually the one filing down my words in my reviews to make them somewhat palatable enough for a publication.
"By an obscenely rich man. Best not ask too many questions about him. The only thing that came with the blank cheque is a strange note that says this car 'does the Ring in 7 minutes, 40 seconds.' Something about claws, too."
A strange, fleeting pulse of familiarity hit me when she said that. When have I met someone who introduces a car with a Nürburgring lap time...? Unable to place my finger on who, I decide it must've just been my imagination. Must be some weirdo... though, the itch of almost knowing is a hard one to scratch.
*********************************************
The first race this week was held at the Ring. Of Bulls. Specifically of the red variety. While we ran the GT3 version of the RC F on the full layout, this week, we're only doing the short track, which is akin to going to the Red Light District for just a hug - we kn- -REDACTED- (Editor's note: we've been through this before, Lee.)
For all my grievances against this car on the road and looking at it, the RC F is... ten times worse on the track. All it takes is however long it takes to reach the first corner of whatever racetrack you're on to realise that this thing has no business on a racetrack, and that no one should think of this as a viable substitute for a real sports car. The Sport Hard tyres it came to me with does an abysmal job of trying to rein in all the speed and mass of the car, and while the Sport Mediums we ran for this week's meetup does an appreciable job of getting things more under control and feeling more natural, that's like adding sugar to a coffee to say it tastes good. You're just adding more of a good thing to a bad recipe. It doesn't change the fact that the recipe and the dish sucks. You might as well be drinking sugar water if you like the taste of sugar so much. I. Want. Good. COFFEE.
(Disclaimer: I am not sleep deprived this week. In fact, I have taken very good strides in fixing my sleep cycle, thank you for asking.)
The first thing that strikes anyone driving this, I'm sure, will be how heavy the car is, how front heavy the car is, how soft the front end is, and as a result, how difficult it is to just get nose of the car to hit an apex. If businessmen introduce themselves with a handshake and exchanging name cards, the RC F introduces itself to its driver with a crippling lethargy to stop, and heavy, inconsolable understeer. To perhaps remedy this, Lexus have fitted the RC F with a brake vectoring system, which came as a big surprise to me, as brake vectoring systems are usually only employed in AWD cars, unless you happen to be McLaren. So... does it work?
*sigh* ...not really.
Brake vectoring on the car makes it feel rather unsettled under braking, as the car always felt like it was on an arbitrary knife edge of snapping from chronic understeer to horrifying oversteer. This makes trail braking difficult, as the car is either understeering from its own mass and imbalance on hard braking, or sliding its rear end out with slight braking and sharp turning, with very little in between and leeway for smooth and aggressive corner entry. That is to say, it's very difficult to be precise in placing the car on trail braking. It seems to me like someone at Lexus took the rubbish saying of "fix understeer with oversteer" too literally, and the car never feels composed as a result.
The rear end breaking out under braking can admittedly be quite fun in the right corners, and the three corners of the edges of the triangle that is Dragon Trail Seaside fit the car's behaviour like a tailor made suit. The car's soft suspension setup, along with its nose heaviness, means it absorbs and chews up curbs with the greatest of ease, with enough feedback to let you know you've absolutely nailed an apex, but never upsetting the car, encouraging copious and unapologetic amounts of kerb abuse. Even the sausages of death on apexes at Red Bull Ring and Laguna Seca, designed to prevent corner cutting by potentially breaking the suspension of racing cars, the RC F simply sails over with nary a hiccup.
I have to admit that drifting into a corner and cutting corners without worry is something that can be ridiculously fun and instantly gratifying, but the brake vectoring system is sadly not without its flaws. You see, the brake vectoring in the RC F isn't as much a driver aid as it is a tool that attempts to mask some of the car's inherent understeer. There are some corners that just don't suit the use of brake vectoring, like high speed kinks that require just a slight dab of the brakes, where the car immediately wants to drift, or high speed sweeping corners, where you're not on the brakes, and brake vectoring is essentially useless. At these high speed sweepers like Seaside's triple esses in Sector 2, where brake vectoring is powerless, the gross lethargy of the obscene(ly heavy) brick you're driving is exposed and basked in full light at these high speed corners.
Unlike the ATTESA AWD system that this brake vectoring somehow reminds me of, the brake vectoring system in this doesn't really hold your hand. You can very much overdo your entry speed and/ or rotation into a corner, and the tyres simply give up in these situations, causing the entire car to go limp. And at that point, there really isn't much of anything the car can do to save itself and you from disaster, and it's only up to you and your sick drifting skillz bro to bring it back from the brink.
So, in other words, the only people that can drive the RC F "properly" are, Ken Block, Mad Mike, Tsuchiya Keiichi, and Vic_Reign93.
Maybe to most people who aren't motorsports fans, smoking your rear tyres in a big V8 RWD car is just something that looks cool, but even someone who only drifts unintentionally as a means to save himself when his grip driving skills fail him, like me, can tell you that this car simply doesn't drift well at all. The problem here is that this car's suspension and gearing doesn't facilitate drifting well, I find. (What I think is) 2nd is running out of breath bouncing off the redline, and shifting up into (what I think is) 3rd puts the engine to sleep. I also wish this thing redlined higher, as, contrary to what the American offerings might have conditioned you to believe, not all NA V8s have plateaus of torque. Power is all up top in the 2UR-GSE NA V8 of the RC F, and it cuts fuel right as you're getting to the good stuff. Not to mention, it's simply way too soft to really hold a drift for long, as the suspension is always looking to bury one side of tyres into finding grip, resulting in a awkward, twitchy transition from slip to grip.
At the end of the day, the very concept of sliding a car to rotate it into an apex is a flawed concept. Why do I say that? The very same reason why I don't drift as a sport: Unless you find yourself in an ultra exacting situation of being in a severely underpowered, extremely lightweight, low grip car in an extremely tight mountain pass and the skills to actually drift, not just slide, grip will always be faster than slip. And that holds true even in the RC F, where I held up both Vic and Nismo in our three way tussle at Seaside, me attempting to slide my way into the sharper corners, and Vic and Nismo driving normally.
In short, the car has several problems, gives you a tool that fixes maybe one of the problems, but the tool itself brings to the table MORE problems that you aren't given the tools to handle and solve. It's just a sad mess. The brake vectoring is at least not very intrusive or in your face in most situations, only showing itself when you really wring the crap out of it with aggressive trail braking, so I don't find it as detestable as most driving aids in modern cars.
The car also has an antiqued automatic gearbox, which I surprisingly don't find much wrong with. It shifts quickly and smoothly enough for a road, and even a sports car. Ratios aside, I never found it to hamper my driving experience. When I might start taking issue with it however, is if I knew how much power the auto box is sapping from the engine, but this means that it doesn't feel bad, which I value over any numerical achievements in a sport...y car.
All in all, the driving experience in the RC F is by and large, as grating as the hexagonal spindle grille on the front, and feels as precise and intuitive as Lexus' patented horrendous Remote Touchpad that they are for some dog poop reason adamantly insisting on, almost as if they were tasked to be a public exhibit of the sunk cost fallacy. Perhaps the biggest sign that "This is not a sports car" is that the harder you drive it, the more it falls apart. This is a car that requires you to know its (very low) limits, and conscientiously keep within said limits. It doesn't reward hard driving, nor does it behave with much composure once past those limits. It therefore is a car that needs to be babied around a racetrack, which is very much the antithesis of a sports, or even sportY car in my mind. Instead of feeling free and alive driving this "sporty" car, I feel like I'm back at school, doing my math homework in a very exacting way with very exacting methods with no leeway for deviance, under a very stern watchful eye of a teacher who won't hesitate to snap on me with every small mistake. Trust me, I'm Asian. I'm speaking from experience. And I'm sorry, but does that sound fun to anyone? Do you really want to get into a car on the weekend after a poop week at work, only to feel further governed, controlled, and metaphorically slapped across the face? I don't. And any car that makes you feel that way has no business being called a sports, or even a sporty car.
For Race 4 at Spa, I hopped into the RC F's biggest, closest competitor, both in the market and on the track. You know I'm sick of the car when I hop into something else to try to beat it in these weekly races.
*********************************************
"Is that your car?", asks Esther as she chances upon me overseeing the delivery of an Austin Yellow car.
"What? No! Why would you think that?", I blurt in retort, already on edge and caught off guard.
"Is that not a Singaporean license plate?"
"There are other M4s in Singapore aside from mine, you know?"
And for a while, the only sound in the paddock was the engine of the truck operating the hydraulics of the lift, and the distant shouting of the truckers coordinating the lowering of the M4 onto the ground. I'm not sure if I said something wrong, but something I said leading to awkward silence isn't new to me, even if it's something you never get used to.
Esther breaks down into a smile and... a... giggle? "You have the most important trait as a reviewer, I guess!" She... smiled! She giggled!
"What? What?"
"It's weird, though! Usually people are proud to drive BMWs", she continues, showcasing a super captivating smile through the gaps of her delicate fingers barely covering her mouth, now that her head has risen again from hunching over.
Am... am I still talking to Esther? Did she get possessed? "Did you research that?", I ask, bewildered.
She freezes for a moment as the smile quickly melts away. "Um, yes, of course...", she clams up, reverting back to the Esther I had known for so long.
I'll admit, I haven't driven the M4 either, having just taken delivery of one from a second hand sale. In fact, due to... circumstances, this is actually my first time seeing the car in person. My first kilometres in the 2014 M4 will be hard track ones, and I had about the entirety of one lap of Spa to get used to it before being recalled into the pits to prepare for race start.
Oops! I did it again! I put on hazards in a BMW!
As I pulled up in my pit box, my anxiety was worsened with me catching a glimpse of an upmarket LC500, donned in a camo livery that made it look like it was ready for some Tactical Espionage Action. I knew nothing else about the car however, so this is going to be... fun. The same sort of fun like -REDACTED- on a first date, awkward and dangerous as all hell, but let's see how "The Benchmark" handles herself jousting with others with an inexperienced Mr. Awkward in her.
While we're in the mood for admissions, I should also admit now that I... know nothing about this car I just bou- I mean, leased. It's down on both power and mass in comparison to the RC F; the 3.0L S55B30T0 twin-turbocharged I6 (seriously, who comes up with the names of these engines?) produces 430PS and 550N⋅m (405.9ft-lb), redlining at 8,000rpm, plopped in a car that then weighs 1497kg (3,300lbs) kerb. In comparison, the RC F's 5.0L 2UR-GSE NA V8 puts out 475PS and 528N⋅m (390.5ft-lb), redlining at 7,500rpm, and weighs in at... well, 1790kg (3,946lbs) kerb, in case I haven't kicked up enough of a fuss about it already. The M4 cost a hell of a lot more new than the RC F; 120k USD versus 95.3k. Hard to believe they're even in the segment, given the gigantic chasm of a price gap between the two, so the M4 had better be good.
Of course, that entire paragraph above is just me tarting up a spec sheet into a few sentences and then mashing it into a barely legible paragraph. The only thing I can tell you about the M4 that isn't on a spec sheet is that it has not one, not two, but THREE speedometers; an analogue one, a digital readout, and then a HUD that tells you nothing but the speed, I know nothing else about the M4 beyond that. Prepared to race this thing then, I am not.
Three speedos, and you somehow find the room to tell me which forward gear I'm in? You Germans are WAY too kind!
Still, there's a saying that goes something like, "A good car should instill you with confidence the first time you turn the wheel in it". Does the M4 deliver on that front?
Well... no. In fact, the exact opposite.
My initial impressions of the M4 is that it's like an overly excited puppy wagging its tail faster than your eye can follow. If you were to take any corner at anything above civil speeds, the car seems to go, "OH, WHAT'S THIS? IS THIS PLAYTIME?! PLAYTIIIIIME!" and starts wagging its tail... er-hem, rear end, left and right with incessence. Corner entry? I KNOW MY OWNER! HE MUST WANT TO DRIFT. DRIFT I SHALL! Corner exit? I KNOW MY OWNER! HE MUST WANT TO SLIDE. SLIDE I SHALL! Gear shift? I bet my owner will be SO SURPRISED and HAPPY if I... SLID OUT MY REAR END!
Unlike the RC F however, getting into a mess in the M4 is actually... fun. It has plateaus of torque across the entire rev range, and geared similarly highly to hold a drift. There's also... something... magical about the chassis, that makes it rotate about its dead centre like a swivel chair, and is just as easy to induce a spin, precise, and easily controllable with your body as your office swivel chair as well. No doubt the much better balanced chassis, with a "near as makes no difference" 50/50 mass distribution helps tremendously in that regard.
This week, we test and conclude - with evidence! - that a 2 door sports coupé is faster around a racetrack than a pickup truck. COTW Weekly Reviews and race videos, for only 10,000 USD per month! Common sense sold separately.
A weapon to surpass Metal Gear?!
I can understand these cars needing to be soft, for a bit of comfort and civility, even in their most aggressive settings. However, in the M4, the softness feels a bit... artificial. It seems set up like a ND Mazda Roadster in that it seems deliberately too soft, so that you can break the car sideways with low effort and enjoy sliding at speeds that won't immediately kill you, so that people of varying skill levels can look like a superhero to an undiscerning audience. In the hands of a racing driver, under the pressure of a race trying to perform however, that kind of behaviour is just disgusting. The M4 is one of those very rare cars where you have to continuously steer to keep straight. While the RC F can be buttoned down and well behaved if you treat it well and drive conscientiously within its limits, there seems to be nothing you can do as a driver to get the M4 to behave on the track. Its over eagerness to rotate rears its head if you're even somewhat in the upper half of its performance envelope. Is it fun? Absolutely. But not every day is a Sunday, and not every hour is playtime. I appreciate the fun of a puppy, but there are times when I just want to get things done, and the M4 simply doesn't cooperate with you when that time comes. It's so twitchy on corner entry and exit, I can hold a smoother, more consistent line in an air cooled 911 than this. And it's... stressful, to be in an M4 in a competitive setting, i.e. the antithesis of fun, ironically.
Metal Slug vs Metal... Gear?!
Speaking of unnatural feeling, I think the engine is a big part of why it feels unnatural, and not just because it pipes in fake engine noises into the cabin. Rather, it seems that BMW has deliberately limited the max power output of the S55 engine to create a flat table of a torque "curve".
You thought I was speaking metaphorically when I said the M4 had "plateaus" of torque?
Not even electric motors have curves this flat. A tabletop of a torque curve like this is a sure sign of limiting power output, by adjusting the airflow into the engine according to the revs; a common practice and result with race regulations that limit maximum power output in cars. A flat torque line like this is ideal in theory, but in practice, it... makes the car feel unnatural. In lower revs on the apex of a corner for example, you would be conditioned from driving internal combustion engines (ICE) to use more of the throttle pedal at low revs, but doing that in the M4 causes it to break out the rear end, because you have more torque in the M4 at low revs than you're conditioned for decades to believe, and this explains a bit of why the M4 is so tail happy all of the time. Personally, I hate that it does that. You could've had a more powerful, more natural feeling car, but NOPE, this is what you end up with instead, presumably to hide the power deficits of a highly boosted 6 banger. I could, in theory get used to the tabletop torque of the M4 if I had more time in it, by driving it like an electric vehicle (EV)... while having to change gears... but at this point, why would I want to drive an ICE like an EV? If I want the driving characteristics of an EV, I'd go drive an EV.
Square, we're not tools of the FIA, or anyone else.
Everything in this car feels bogus to me. And usually, when things feel phony, they're meant to give off a better experience than if the product were more honest, like making someone look prettier in Photoshop. In the M4 however, in trying to hide things from me, it just makes itself look like a complete clown. It all feels like a deliberate, conscious act. The suspension could easily be stiffer. The diff could easily be tighter. The engine could be allowed to breathe just a bit more. And just like an acting clown, it can be a little bit of fun at the right times, sure, but it's ultimately not something I'm likely to fall in love with. It's so... deliberately dishonest. Consciously crippled. And that makes it feel more like a product off an assembly line than something that feels like it has... a soul.
I returned to the M4 in the last race of our session at Yamagiwa. At the end of lap 3, having just been passed by Vic in his RC F, I gave him a bit of a push out of the last corner, to match our speeds going into the home straight. It was a bit of a rude and impromptu drag race test for me, as I wanted to see if the RC F could gap the longer geared, less powerful, but lighter M4. I pulled out of his slipstream for this, obviously, given that I was already on his rear bumper going out of the corner.
Surprisingly, and very counter intuitively, the M4 actually pulled up to the side of the RC F to about its door opening area by the braking point of T1. Very minuscule difference in straight line speed, but an advantage, nonetheless. With the RC F's standout, selling point being its hulking NA V8, an endangered rarity in today's market, and making more power on paper, one would think, and hope, that the NA V8 car would out accelerate the M4, IF NOTHING ELSE. It really makes you wonder how much power the auto box in the RC F is sapping away. I'd love to run a wheel horsepower test between these two cars to satiate my curiosity about a moot point, but alas, we didn't have the equipment on hand to do that.
SPOILER: After the Race
Surrounded by imaginary race queens and drowning in their high pitched screams and squeals of celebration, I got out of the car like a martyr awaiting long overdue celebration and recognition. The car was pouring smoke through the panel gaps in the bonnet, the distinct smell of engine coolant pungent in the open air pit lane. My assigned team of mechanics rush over to my car in the poisonous haze, signalling for me to release the bonnet latch. I do so, and leave them to stun the crowd with a volcanic display of smoke.
Wearing a self assuring smile, I beamed with the enthusiasm of a school boy who finally managed to get a B for math class as I looked over to Vic, similarly exiting his RC F, surrounded less by mechanics but even more imaginary race queens. The modest Brit was already trying to downplay his achievement of winning most of the races that week to his legions of adoring fans. The dented door panels now causing the door to refuse to close properly, I slammed the door harder to get it to close, in a not-at-all weird second slam, and waltzed up to Vic to let him know what I thought of his performance this week.
"What are you smiling about?", confronts Vic.
"Dude I almost had you!", I assert with a casual jab of the air in front of me. The imaginary crowd gasps and cheers at the audacity of the truth bomb I just laid on Vic.
"You almost had me?", he points to me, and then him, as he said that. "You never had me. You never had your car." He had the imaginary crowd eating out of his hand with every sentence, causing them to "ooh" and "aah" as though they were his punctuation. Some technical gibberish about intakes and clutches later, he says:
"It doesn't matter if it's by an inch or by a mile, winning's winning."
END SPOILERS
*********************************************
So... Lexus. Did you benchmark the M4 or not when you made the RC F? And if you didn't, why not? It is the class defining car! One whole second around one lap? That's an eternity even by road car standards!
(Disclaimer: I did the time attack only AFTER this week's races, so I really didn't know the M4 was that much quicker than the RC F when I brought it to this week's meet.)
I will admit, neither of those two laps were the cleanest, and I definitely had more pace in me with both cars than the results I posted, but I was getting SO ANGRY trying to get either of these two cars to set a clean, decent lap without any obvious mistakes, I even smacked the wheel of my M4 in frustration. And that's when I knew I had to stop, and the verdict decided.
What did I learn from my little time attack session at Bathurst, comparing the two cars directly on the same track, with the same driver, in the same conditions, back to back? Both cars are horrendous to drive for the exact opposite reasons: the RC F with understeer, and the M4, oversteer. Any enthusiast reading this might immediately default to, "well, oversteer is more fun". Na-uh. The snappiness of the M4 is SO BAD, I might actually prefer the RC F to drive in a time attack setting than the M4, even if it's a second slower per lap, even if it has more power and hits a lower top speed... which is utterly shameful. For as much as I loathe the driving dynamics of the RC F, I got out of the M4 and into the RC F with a big sigh of relief. It felt like a great weight was off my shoulders not having to continuously rein in an overly hyperactive child five times every corner exit. The RC F offers a very calming, very predictable drive in comparison, even with my complaints about its brake vectoring.
For as disgusted as I am with the RC F's stopping distances, the M4 uses largely the same braking points for every corner, in spite of being lighter, actually having carbon ceramic brakes, and only going marginally faster. I haven't any theories as to why that is so.
I find that the M4 has more consistent behaviour through the five lap stint I did for both cars, being the lighter car that consumes less fuel and tyres. The RC F feels vastly different over a short ten minute stint, and I never precisely know where its absolute limits are as a result, which I suspect is what made me lose my lead to Vic on the last corner of the last lap at Laguna; watching the video back, I was going at the exact same speed and braked at exactly the same point as the previous laps, but I still braked too early for that last corner. If you watch the video, you can tell Vic wasn't even expecting to make a pass at the point; he was forced into it.
So, at the end of this ramble, what are the verdicts on these cars? Beater or sleeper? Which is better than the other, and which would I recommend over the other?
I'll start by saying that both of these cars are Beaters to me. Keep in mind however, that this doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad cars for what they are and are meant to do; rather, it's just that I'm spoiled silly by bona fide sports cars, and I will readily admit that I am not the target demographic for this segment of luxury coupés. When I say that they're Beaters, it simply means that they don't offer me the driving experience that I'm looking for, which you may argue is an unfair evaluation, but I've had one luxury coupé surprise me before, and I rated that a Sleeper. It absolutely can be pulled off. I stand by my verdict of Beaters, because if you're going to make a 2 door coupé, you're offering the same practicality as a spartan, bona fide sports car for more money, and that's the standard that I'm going to hold these luxury coupés to when it comes to driving dynamics, as well, especially if companies are going to tout these things as "high performance vehicles" and boast about their handling.
I can't really comment on how both cars will be to live with, or how they'll coddle you in everyday, sensible driving. I daily an FD RX-7 for some context. Stuff like that isn't very important to me. What is important to me is that the cars make me feel alive when I'm pushing them. That they let me know all about themselves. That they communicate clearly with me at all times, and cooperate with me. I maybe even want them to bite me once in awhile if I push them too far. Above all else, I am a simple man who prefers simple, honest cars. And looking for that in this segment, or even in this era, is nigh impossible. I'm not ashamed to admit it: I'm an old man who isn't aging well, but I like what I like and I can't change my preferences.
Could you still have fun in these cars? Sure, I guess... but it will always feel like having intercourse with five layers of rubber on at all times; there will always be a bit of a disconnect, you won't really ever feel everything you want, you won't ever truly get to know your partner, and there will always be that bit of frustration in lamenting that lack of knowledge and communication. You won't ever feel a deep, meaningful connection with them. And maybe you'd forgive them for being a bit numb and bogus if they looked or sounded better, but they don't. I have better looking and feeling cars at home. (Esther PLEASE don't edit this out, I'm so illiterate I don't know how else to present this.) (Editor's note: okay, it's your reputation and account at stake.)
Lap times aside, I couldn't really tell you which is better on the track. That wholly depends on what kind of person you are, and what you prefer. Do you prefer a rock solid drive that can excite you a little if you absolutely asked for it? Or would you prefer something that continuously and endlessly encourages you to play, to be a hooligan? These cars are very different on the track, but they have their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses of equal magnitude, so I think the choice of which of these two to pick ultimately comes down to how the car behaves and how well it meshes with your driving style, the luxury features they offer, or entirely subjective stuff like "how well do the seats coddle you", "which of these two cars' styling do you prefer", "which of these two cars stigmatise you more to own and drive", or "which of these cars' infotainment you find less of a pain in the butt".
If you had me at gunpoint and forced me to choose which of these two cars I'd buy and live with, I'd kindly request you pull the trigger, but for argument's sake, I'd... most likely take the M4, simply because the remote touch thing in the RC F is an instant deal breaker for me, along with its styling. The M4 also has the advantage of being lighter on fuel, as well, and I think it has a bit more street cred. Its faults seem like easier fixes than those of the RC F's. You might have noticed that most of what I just said didn't have any relation to how these two cars drive. And that I think is the main takeaway from my week with these two cars: that people buy these cars not for absolute, bleeding edge performance, as evidenced by their showboaty driving characteristics and shoddy behaviour at their limits. People buy these things almost as a status symbol, to be comfortable, to impress dates, for going maybe 5mph above the speed limit on British B roads and pretending they're Ayrton Senna without actually being near the limits of the cars. That's just not the sort of person I am. These cars aren't for me. For the money these cars cost, I'd buy a Camaro ZL1 1LE, and have a healthy chunk of cash left over. Heck, I'd even go buy a GT86.
The RC F is ugly. It's not at all sporty. It's infotainment is an indecipherable mess. It's unpredictable to drive. It's powerful and thirsty, but doesn't put out numbers to match. It's not very practical. It looks and feels like a sumo wrestler trying to wield a Katana. I find very little to like about the RC F. Even its main selling point, its engine, isn't that good. I really don't understand who would buy this hunk of junk. While Lexus would like everyone to believe that the "F" in their "high" performance models stands for "Fuji Speedway", it feels more like the letter grade any car reviewer would give it, and perhaps also as a prompt for the public to pay their respects to the looming demise of this segment and the RC as a whole.
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Erina Mami Today at 1:24 PM
I found an article that describes the different drive modes of the RC F.
https://blog.lexus.co.uk/lexus-rc-f-engineered-for-maximum-reward/
Dino Lee Today at 1:35 PM
Doesn't look like much, mostly just how the auto gearbox selects gears, which is entirely out the window when you shift manually.
Erina Mami Today at 1:35 PM
So it's not a big deal?
Dino Lee Today at 1:35 PM
Completely irrelevant from the looks of it. Still would've liked to try it to make sure, though.
Erina Mami Today at 1:35 PM
I thought you hated the car. Hard to believe you want to drive it more
after your temper tantrum at Mount Panorama
leaving the car on the track and walking back some 2km to the pits
Dino Lee Today at 1:38 PM
I might hate it less if Sport+ Mode actually got its act together
I hate not knowing a car entirely. Makes me feel like I didn't do my job.
Then again this car is always going to hide things from me.
It seems to have an Expert mode, and another unnamed mode, that Lexus doesn't even tell customers how to engage.
Erina Mami Today at 1:42 PM
You're doing fine.
Dino Lee Today at 1:50 PM
Thanks.
Erina Mami Today at 1:53 PM
I quite like the cars, actually.
Dino Lee Today at 1:54 PM
Really?
Why?
Erina Mami Today at 2:06 PM
I don't know.
It's comfortable.
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