Although Lexus is careful to avoid using the “sports car” tag to describe the LC500, the car nevertheless is possessed of some very sports-car-like qualities: The engine sits behind the centerline of the front axle, the wheels are pushed out to the corners, the driver’s hip point was “engineered to be as close as possible to the vehicle’s center of gravity,” and the list of materials used in the car’s construction includes highfalutin substrates such as carbon fiber, magnesium, and aluminum. Did we mention that Lexus claims the LC500’s unibody is the most rigid it has ever built, stiffer even than that of the brand’s rolling tribute to exclusive, high-buck one-upmanship, the Lexus LFA? That’s some serious stuff.

 

But where the LFA played in rarefied air (production was limited to 500 units and the price tag was a whopping $375,000), the LC500 is poised to mingle with the rest of the Lexus lineup, where it will serve as a demonstration of what the brand can do with its front-engine, rear-wheel-drive architecture. At 113.0 inches, its wheelbase is almost an inch longer than that of the GS sedan, but the coupe is nearly five inches shorter overall.