The Only Lexus GS F For Sale Right Now Is Rarer Than Many Supercars
The ideal car for a lot of people would be a mid-size saloon with four doors, five seats, a big enough boot and an engine with all the charisma in the world. Add to that a rarity factor that outstrips most hypercars and car nerds like us will need to have a little sit down.
We have exactly that car for you, partly inspired by the Lexus LC Convertible concept revealed this week: the GS F. Peerlessly reliable with a network of great dealers behind it, this is a typical Lexus. It’s easy to live with, spacious enough for the family or friends, luxurious and comfortable enough to make you feel like moving your TV into it and using it as your living room, and for some unfathomable reason, it’s really, really rare in this country.
It may not be the king of outright dynamism thanks to its hefty 1830kg kerb weight, which, according to the firm, would have been at least 100kg lower if not for specific safety requirements for the US market, but the hot GS is far more astute on the road than many people would imagine.
Quick steering, fluid and well balanced damping, decent visibility and a genuinely throttle-adjustable rear-wheel drive chassis played brilliant supporting roles to the headline act: a 5.0-litre normally-aspirated V8 with 471bhp that revs to 7300rpm. Don’t forget the coolest exhaust layout of any of its contemporaries, either.
It sounded fantastic pretty much all the time, whether you were biffing through town or howling through the countryside. With fairly linear but always tempting power delivery the GS F was a car that felt immediately natural and reassuring when you started pressing on. It was in its element at eight or nine tenths. Its original £70,000 asking price undercut the Germans by a handy margin, too, so we simply can’t explain why it didn’t sell better.
Just 73 were shifted on this island between its 2016 launch and the permanent demise of the wider GS range – for 2019 it has been replaced with an all-new car called the ES, bringing the UK naming structure into line with most other markets worldwide. Just 73. That compares with over 500 hard-top Ferrari 488s in the same time frame. With a year less on the clock McLaren has sold 353 domestic examples of the 720S.
It also means that our pick from the classifieds – the only one we can find for sale today, even in the Lexus approved used network – constitutes 1.37 per cent of all Lexus GS Fs on the road in Britain today. Exclusive? Oh yeah.
The blue metallic paint suits this gentleman’s rocket ship perfectly. Inside you’ll be granted toasty buttocks in the front two F Sport seats as you play with the likes of adaptive cruise control, sat-nav and the utterly sublime Mark Levinson stereo system of many, many speakers. Dual-zone climate control, electric seat adjustment, automatic lights and wipers, a head-up display and a rear parking camera pretty much go without saying in this class.
It’s a hell of a car, and, at £35,999, is about half its original price less than three years ago. If ever we were tempted to embrace the fruits of unfair depreciation, it’s now.
Comments
I actually really really like it
But it’s heavy. Very heavy.
Its not that bad for a big saloon, the bmw f10 m5 weighed 1900kg
Same weight, but 130hl less, or 170 compare to the comp’ package.
Is that a fat joke?
Yeah my 3 problems with this car:
Future classic, calling it now
Wish they would’ve made a wagon version
No, nobody buys wagons anymore, so if that thing is already harder to sell than a 720S or a 488 then nobody would have bought a wagon. Furthermore there is no GS wagon actually existing at the moment, so I doubt they’d make one from scratch to decline it in a version that already doesn’t sell in its regular form.
Never skip wheels day!
I see these all the time where i live in canada. Its really popular here and im surprised at such a low number
I haven’t seen a single one in Canada.
I live in Oakville and there’s like 5 I think it’s cause like it’s really rich people in my town that “cannot be seen in a Lexus”
They just cost so much to run here in the UK. When fuel is roughly $2 dollars a litre. And the Tax on them every year is silly high as well.
Definitely getting this over the M5
Best performance sedan ever
Only 73? So there’s more Porsche 962s in the world than these in uk
Having driven one of these, i can tell you, its a very fun car. Its Automatic is bit on the slower side, but it does its job fine and this thing hauls ass, and that V8 sounds amazing
Sounds wayy better than an M5 or a E63 though
I’ve driven that generation GSF, even the same color, plenty of times before and it is a really great car… for American roads. It just doesn’t fit into the area and space you have in the UK.