2025 Lexus LC500 Review
2025 Lexus LC500
MSRP: $106,950
5.0 Liter V8
471 HP / 398 TQ
0-60: 4.4 seconds
Guy who did stuff: Yousef Alvi
I present to you….an ode to an engine
The 2UR-GSE (found in this LC500, IS500 and RC-F) sticks out like a sore thumb in today’s world. What in the actual hell is a 5.0 Liter V8, with no turbos, no hybrid assist…no new fangled ‘follow the leader’ technology doing in a luxury sports car?
Giving the world a giant middle finger…is what it’s doing.
Bowing to the masses in the second generation Lexus IS and thusly transforming it into the IS-F (F stands for ‘frack you’), the rip snorting, snarling and yet velvety smooth 2UR-GSe instantly won over well everyone. Sure the IS-F wasn’t the M3 killer that everyone wanted it to be and sure it rode like it’s tires were filled with concrete…it was that engine that was the gave it it’s soul.
What so special about it? Oh, it's just a casual engineering masterpiece. The 2UR-GSE engine distinguishes itself with added engineering brilliance from Yamaha. Taking their sportbike engineering knowledge and slathering it all over like an Irish person with sunscreen at a beach. Yamaha provides the heads, titanium is used for the valves, the block is aluminum and using a crapton of acronyms like VVti VVtiE and D-4S to explain it’s super duper VTEC cam changeover that makes everyone go all gooey…it’s a singular engine.
The sheer audacity of its existence in a world of downsized, turbocharged everything. It's the refusal to compromise on that linear power delivery, that instant throttle response that makes you feel like you're actually in control, not some computer algorithm. And that sound! Oh, there is NOTHING on the road today that has an intake snarl like this engine. It’s a sound so intoxicatingly addictive…that it feels like it is massaging the dopamine right into your brain.
The one thing everyone overlooks though is that this is a Lexus engine folks. It’s relatively easy to make any engine perform…but to make the same engine civil is a completely different thing. That is the hidden beauty of this engine folks…it’s as exhilarating as it is calming. Cruising around town it’s quiet, docile, smooth and harminous. It feels…well luxurious…like any Lexus should be.
So here's to the 2UR-GSE, a glorious anachronism, a middle finger to the status quo. May ToMoCo figure out a way to keep it around as long as humanly possible.
Oh and the 2025 Lexus LC500 itself? It also stands as a stubborn middle finger to the rest of the automotive world. How so? Well it has been vomited all over the internet that grand tourers are dead. That sports cars are dead. Welp, the LC500 proudly screams ‘frack that’. But it does so oozing with style. Is this one of the best looking cars on the road today? Absolutely. Does this break every neck as it drives by? You betcha. Does make you feel that it’s worth every single penny? Completely and without hesitation.
Driving the Lexus LC500 is akin to rolling around in a MOMA exhibit. It exudes grace, luxury and style from every crease of it’s sculpted body. It doesn’t stop on the inside either because the LC is graced with the best interior every fitted to a Lexus vehicle. Everything feels like it was honed and crafted by an artisan…not a mere robot. It does so because…it was. The LC is built in the same plant using the same people who created the LFA.
So the 2UR-GSE and the LC500 are kindred spirits. Both made and belong together. Both stand for something that no other car on the road stands for…that is unbridled independence.
Yousef Alvi
