The Lexus GS F Is Far From Perfect, But I Still Want One

I’d always been quietly intrigued by the Lexus GS F. Ever since BMW and Mercedes joined Audi in throwing turbochargers and four-wheel drive at most of their performance saloons and coupes, I’ve rooted for Lexus’ F brand, and its bloody-minded devotion to the combination of a 5.0-litre naturally aspirated 2UR-GSE V8 and rear-wheel drive.

I admired the GS F in particular. Even though contemporary reviews never really rated it compared to what the German brands were up to, there’s just something inherently right about a bigger saloon with a grunty free-breathing V8 under the bonnet. The Maserati Quattroporte. The Vauxhall VXR8. The E39 M5. Cars like this are just… cool.

When the GS F launched back in 2016, though, I was busy revising for my A-Levels and discovering just how bad hangovers could be, so I never drove it new. By the time it was dropped three years later, just 73 had been shifted in the UK. Not 7300. Not 730. Seventy-three.

It’s fortunate, then, that Toyota GB has kept one of these rarities around on its heritage fleet, which it recently let some journalists have a play with. Truthfully, those original unfavourable comparisons to the M5, E63 and RS6 were probably justified – but now that the GS F has slipped into the realm of modern classics, none of that matters. Here’s everything I found annoying about it, and why I still want one.

The steering

The week before I drove the GS F, I’d been getting acquainted with another car fitted with the lovely 2UR engine – the RC F Ultimate. This is a European run-out special edition of Lexus’s M4-rivalling coupe, essentially the Track Edition car with some blue carbon fibre inside and a numbered plaque.

Having never driven any of the F cars before this, I was hugely surprised by how sharp and serious the RC’s steering felt: direct, weighty, talkative, and almost telepathically dialled into the front end.

The bigger GS F’s steering… isn’t like that. It’s an unfair comparison, really, because the RC F Ultimate is a more hardcore version of an already smaller, more focused car, and the GS F is based on a big exec saloon. But even then, the difference is stark. The GS F’s steering has a strange glassy lightness to it off-centre, then gets disconcertingly fidgety if it finds ruts in the roads. None of it inspires much confidence when driving quickly.

The noise

The GS F sounds good. It has a 5.0-litre naturally aspirated V8, of course it sounds good. But it’s all a bit undramatic. From inside the car, there’s none of the raging thunder you’d hope for from a free-breathing eight-pot, even when you’re closing in on the 7300rpm redline. It’s still far more charismatic than anything its turbocharged rivals can muster, but it’s hard not to crave a little more.

The interior

Not its quality, which is as impeccable as you’d hope for in a Lexus, or the comfort, with seats that are like squishing into big red leather clouds. In fact, there’s really only one big annoyance in here, and it’s the little touchpad Lexus gives for navigating the car’s infotainment screen. It requires more precision and a defter touch than even a rocket scientist with a sideline in brain surgery possesses, and will probably give you childhood flashbacks to shakily trying to navigate the menu screen on a Wii.

The handling

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way the GS F handles. Really, it does an admirable job of hiding its chunky 1790kg kerb weight. Like the engine, though, it doesn’t feel quite as exciting as you’d hope a car sending 471bhp to the rear wheels would. It feels a bit buttoned-up, a bit safe, and it’s a shame Lexus didn’t capitalise a bit more on its rear-drive, nat-asp USP when the German brands were getting a bit too serious themselves.

But…

The fact of the matter is that all of the above complaints (with the exception of that irritating control touchpad) assume you’re looking at the GS F as a direct rival to the contemporary M5, et al. This, in reality, is the wrong approach.

See, the GS F isn’t a finely honed sports saloon, no matter what Lexus would have wanted you to think when it was on sale. It’s a muscle car, just one that’s gotten a bit better at going round corners.

That V8 really is the centrepiece – wonderfully tractable and with a power band as broad as Texas, but with sensible enough power levels that mean you can properly explore it on the road. It’s paired with an old-school torque converter auto that suits its character perfectly – it doesn’t bang through gears ferociously, but just changes smoothly and unintrusively as you power along.

There’s much else to like besides, though. The pliant ride, the exquisite build quality, the fact that the styling direction of certain other companies (*cough, BMW, cough*) have made Lexus’ once-derided ‘Predator face’ grille look almost handsomely restrained.

Objectively, the GS F will be left for dead by its rivals in pretty much every arena. But – and I realise how silly this sounds coming from someone whose job it is to tell you what cars are objectively like – cars like this can’t be ranked on objectivity. And subjectively, a GS F would find a home in my dream garage sooner than pretty much anything BMW, Audi or Merc were making at the time – or even now.