Autoblog West Coast Editor drives the surprisingly compelling 2020 Lexus GS F. It may not stack up to its competitor on paper, but it makes up for that in character and communication.
Transcript- I'm driving the Lexus GSF. Now, this isn't a car you hear too much about it. It's been around for a while, and it's a Lexus, a brand that people still quite unfairly dismiss as something for old men in Arizona. But there is one other perfectly good reason-- numbers. This is a 5-liter V8. It has 467 horsepower and 389 pound feet of torque. It goes from 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds. Now, that is far less and it is far slower than a Mercedes E63 or a BMW M5. Hell, even a BMW M550i.
Now, there is an explanation for this, and specifically this is missing two things. The first is all-wheel drive. This sucker sends its power only to the back. Yee-haw. The other is a turbo charger. This is naturally aspirated. So it misses out on that immediate neck-snapping torque of all those turbo-charged Germans, and the bragging rights 0 to 60 times that the turbocharger and the massive grip of all-wheel drive afford. But this does it make up for that with response, with character. This revs to 7,800 RPM, and noise. And not fake noise either. No, no, no, I've turned that off, and yet this still sounds fantastic. But don't take my word for it. No, no. GSF, take it over.
[ENGINE REVVING]
So it's not just the engine. It's not just sound. This really does have a great driver-machine connection to it. I love the steering in this car. There's a precision to it. There's a really nice turn in. It doesn't feel that heavy. Yes, it is a rear-wheel drive, however it does have a trick multi-setting differential that provides for torque vectoring. And the Germans, they seem so wildly capable that you can't really enjoy them as much on just a regular, albeit kind of awesome, mountain road such as this. They feel like they're doing so much of the job for you. This, you still feel like you're part of the process.
I really like it. There is actually something to enjoy here, even if the numbers don't tell you that it is the best car, because frankly it probably isn't. But there's more to cars than numbers, and this car absolutely delivers on that promise. Now frankly, there is a little bit of a problem, and that is the price. This starts at $85,000. This one loaded is 89. Now, that is far less than the E63 and M5, but of course, we've already determined that on paper they blow this car away. However, it's still a couple of thousand more than that m550 as well as the E53 AMG that, on paper, this car actually basically matches.
However, again, I've driven that E53, and this car, I enjoy this far more. There's just far more character to it. It just feels more special, just down to the way it sounds, the feel to the steering, the fact that there isn't a million different settings. There's some settings, but not a million of them that kind of get in the way of your enjoyment of driving. And yeah, the yellow paint doesn't hurt either.
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