Lexus LFA number 499 finds a home

The last LFA in America is delivered, to a man who already has one

Two of the custom-designed LFA watches from Meister, as seen on Williamsen's wrist. Photo by Blake Z. Rong.


By: Blake Z. Rong on 2/01/2013

Roy Mallady turns 68 in a week. So he figured, why not buy himself a car?

He just happened to buy himself a nice, reliable Lexus: an LFA. The fastest, most involving, most superlative vehicle Toyota has ever built. 552 horsepower from its V10 engine, acceleration to 60 in just 3.6 seconds, a carbon fiber monocoque hand-built by Toyota's finest men at a facility designed just for it.

When Toyota first embarked on the project it envisioned low production figures, in true supercar fashion: just 20 built per month, a total of 500. That's it. Three years later, Toyota finally got what it wanted—all 500 cars have been delivered. The last one went to a museum, as supercars usually do. 178 more went to America. Number 499? It fell right into Mallady's lap.

Number 499 is Steel grey, with a red interior and gunmetal wheels. It'll look good parked next to #003, the other LFA that Mallady owns. That's right -- the man pictured above owns the first and last LFAs delivered to America.
Why? Why not?

Blake Z. Rong
Mallady reads a letter from his wife to Lexus beseeching them not to sell him another LFA, fer Chris'sakes.

Mallady speaks with a smooth Southern drawl, the kind that gets you to sign on the dotted line, and peers at you from intense blue eyes that look like they won't take any doubt for an answer. After working in medical sales for 30 years, he retired in 1998 and now spends his time as "a wannabe race car driver." He's fond of giving the thumbs up in photos, which he does next to his LFA about a dozen times. Whether he's genuinely that enthusiastic about Lexus is a matter for the PR team, but they know Mallady is public relations gem. "It's the greatest car I've ever owned," he gushed in public to an assembly of journalists and Lexus executives alike. "It'll be with me for the rest of my life. That's what I think about your product. It's a piece of art. No one has appreciated the LFA as much as I have."

Mallady first saw the car on the pages of our own Autoweek magazine, in May of 2005. "I was almost taking tranquilizers to stay calm about it." His car history reads like a casting couch of European exotics, starting dubiously with a Maserati Merak, which for thinner-skinned individuals may be enough to swear off this whole car-collecting business entirely. But Mallady stuck with it and proceeded to own -- at various times -- three Porsches, a Lotus Esprit, two Ferrari 360s, a 650-horsepower 911, an Audi R8, and a GTR with 700 horsepower that he likes to take to Atlanta Motorsports Park, from which he lives a mile away.

Between he and his wife, the two have gone through nine Lexus LSs, four LX SUVs and an SC400. Brand agonistes, unite! He goes through cars, as the stereotype goes, like a teenage girl picking out prom dresses: some strolled just 1,000 miles before they were sold.

LFA number 003, however, has racked up 7,000 miles and is already on its third set of brakes.

"This is a better track car than any Ferrari," he said. "I have the only car in Georgia. There's probably 200 Ferraris and 50 Lamborghinis in Georgia, but just two LFAs. People take pictures of me at 70 miles per hour on the highway. People run up to me in the parking lot. I took it to a car show at Turner Field, and you'd think I had Queen Elizabeth with me or something. Hundreds of people just ran, ran to my car!"
When the LFA came out, Lexus played around with some adventurous ownership options, mainly consisting of not owning one at all. After passing round after round of deposits, credit checks, and interviews with high school bullies, prospective LFA seekers could be granted the luxury of leasing an LFA for two years -- at which the company invoked first right of refusal and droit du seigneur to take it back. Mallady bought #003 the day Lexus agreed to the idiosyncratic notion that those who buy a car can actually keep it.

Number 003 was the last car he bought before 499. He doesn't plan on buying any more cars. "I'm done," he said. "Thirty-five years I've been buying cars. Lexus is it. My appetite for other cars is gone. I'm done."

Mallady plans to keep both of his LFA until the day he dies. Why does he need two cars? some in the audience asked. Well, maybe one's a parts car, was our joke. Lexus may not have appreciated that very much.

The lessons of the LFA will carry over to Lexus, said Brian Bollain, Lexus's PR manager. The new GS was imbued with similarly unnatural layers of enthusiasm. The even sportier IS directly lifts the gauges from the LFA. Carbon fiber will play extensively in future models. And though he didn't exactly say this out loud --- remember, there were journalists present -- the fact was known as such: Lexus will produce another sports car, perhaps a supercar. It may be the LF-LC concept from last year.

Well, maybe Mallady will pick up one more car, then. Unsurprisingly, he announced, with no self-doubt, "I'll be getting one on order." We hope it's brown.

LFA number 003, however, has racked up 7,000 miles and is already on its third set of brakes.

The LFA isn’t your run-of-the-mill Lexus, so it should come as little surprise that when it’s due for a service, owners can’t simply roll up to their local Lexus dealership. While in the U.S. LFA owners are looked after by a handful of specialized dealerships, over in Europe Lexus has made the TMG motorsport and engineering center in Cologne, Germany its center of excellence for the car.

TMG was the builder of Toyota’s Formula One race cars in the previous decade, but currently it is responsible for the automaker’s Le Mans prototypes. Now, Lexus has revealed that TMG is also on hand to care for the 38 LFAs that currently reside in Europe.

Peter Dresen is the person who heads the center’s operations. In a statement, he said: “We treat an LFA more or less like a Le Mans car. The servicing principles are the same as for a normal Lexus road car, but it’s much more complicated to do certain things and access certain parts, which makes the LFA closer to a racing car in terms of how we take care of it.”

For the cars major service, body panels need to be removed to give clear access to the suspension, steering system and subframe. For those parts that can be easily accessed, an x-ray system is used to look for any wear or performance issues.

Many of the routine servicing jobs are the same as for a regular car, such as replacement of the air and oil filters and an oil change. One that’s unique to the LFA is a detailed inspection of the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic body.

Once the work on the car is complete, the final part of the service is a series of test that includes high-speed runs on the autobahn. Note, LFA owners don’t have to send their cars to Cologne for work to be done: Dresen and his team will travel to major local dealerships, with the necessary equipment to do the work off-site.

All of you folks may already know that BMW is working in partnership with Toyota on the new Supra and a new sports vehicle from the German manufacturer. Still, today we found out a very interesting thing: BMW is also working with Lexus on the second-generation of the LFA supercar.

According to Japan’s Best Car magazine, the new Lexus LFA will arrive as a plug-in hybrid supercar and will borrow technology from the BMW i8. This means that the LFA will receive a powerful petrol engine but also an electric motor in order to take on its rivals such as the Honda NSX.

Unfortunately, we don’t have too many details as the vehicle is still in the early stage of development. The new model is expected to be even faster than the first-generation, which was powered by a 4.8-liter V10 engine delivering 552 hp @ 8,700 rpm and 354 lb-ft (480 Nm) @ 9,000 rpm. The Lexus LFA is capable to hit 60 mph (96 km/h) in 3.6 seconds, while top speed is limited at 202 mph or 325 km/h.

Meanwhile, the BMW i8 is focused on fuel-efficiency despite its impressive performances. For those who don’t know, the BMW i8 is powered by a 1.5-liter BMW TwinPower Turbo petrol engine that generates 231 hp (170 kW) and a maximum torque of 320 Nm. The i8 also comes with an electric motor that delivers 131 hp (91 kW) and 250 Nm of torque.

The electric motor takes its energy from a lithium-ion batter and powers the front wheels, while the petrol engine delivers all its power to the rear wheels. Total output of the hybrid system is 362 hp (266 kW) and 570 Nm of torque. As a result, the BMW i8 hits 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.5 seconds while top speed is electronically limited at 250 km/h or 155 mph.

Despite its performances, the BMW i8 has a fuel consumption of less than 2.5 liters/100 km or over 113 mpg, while CO2 emissions are less than 59 grams per km. As you can see, it makes perfect sense to make an even better supercar by using a big engine and the hybrid tech from the BMW i8. This means that the next-generation Lexus LFA will be even faster than its predecessor but also fuel-efficient.

This means that the LFA will receive a powerful petrol engine but also an electric motor in order to take on its rivals such as the Honda NSX.

Includes one of the world’s finest supercar engines. Stop what you're doing and buy it

There is good news and there is bad news. Actually, there’s only good news. The Lexus LFA has returned to the good people of Planet Supercar. At least, for the purposes of acquisition.

Gooding & Company is offering up this exquisite, limited edition LFA Nürburgring Pack at its upcoming Scottsdale Auction next year, and you should really pay attention because, well, it is a Lexus LFA and it has a V10 and nothing else matters right now.

Only 500 LFAs were built, and of those 500, only 50 featured the Nürburgring Pack. This consisted of an increase in power to that magnificent, glorious and earth-shatteringly noisy 4.8-litre V10. Where it once made 552bhp, here it makes 562bhp.

Only 10bhp more, but an LFA thus equipped with that pack wasn’t meant to be an outright power merchant. Lexus also added a new front spoiler formed of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic, dive planes, and a fixed rear wing. And special ‘mesh-type’ wheels with bespoke, gripper tyres. And stiffer, adjustable suspension. And a recalibrated gearbox for even more insanely fast shifts. A decent overhaul, then.

So, while the performance matches the ‘regular’ LFA – 0-62mph in 3.7secs and a top speed of 202mph – those aero additions helped it record a Nürburgring lap time of 7min 14secs. Fast, in any sane universe. Eight seconds quicker than its non-packed sibling.

This one is uniquely special, in that it’s number 498 of the 500 hand-built run (it apparently took Lexus one day to build one LFA), and has done less than 60 miles since 2012. When it was new. That’s an average of 12 MILES A YEAR, people.

Ah, did we say bad news? There is some, but really it’s only good news. Yes, it’s expensive (as ever), expected as it is to sell for between $900,000 and $1,200,000 when it goes up for auction. A lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

Yet, weirdly, it doesn’t matter. Because you’re essentially getting a unicorn. The moment Lexus made the supercar world sit up and take notice. With less than 60 miles on the clock. Welcome back, old girl.

Lexus LFAs don't come up for sale often. There's only a handful on offer right now in the entire country, including this one. It's LFA #250, one of just two examples painted in "Fresh Green." You should buy it.

The market price for an LFA is currently hovering near the $500,000 range—well above the car's original $375,000 MSRP. It's safe to say these things are now collector items, which explains why the seller of this green example, CNC Motors in Upland, California, is asking a staggering $699,888. It's not like it's an ultra-rare hardcore Nurburgring Edition, either—it's just a normal production LFA. That means a 4.8-liter V10 making 553 horsepower sending power to the rear wheels via a six-speed single clutch automatic gearbox, and arguably the greatest engine noise on earth. The exhaust was tuned by Yamaha to make it particularly great, and it delivers. The only thing that makes this car stand out from the rest is its color.

It's rare to see an LFA in such a vibrant color, but is it worth the extravagant asking price? Well, that's up to the market to decide. This same exact car appeared on DuPont Registry in 2014 with an asking price of $399,900 and 745 miles on the clock. Now, it has nearly double the mileage, and a $300,000 higher asking price. Personally, I'd spend my money on the faster, more extreme Nurburgring Edition, but if you want to stand out in a crowd of supercars, a bright color like this one is the way to go—if you're willing to drop the extra cash, that is. Find it here on CNC Motors' site.

The Lexus LFA was a real engineering tour de force. Sure, it was stuck in development hell for years, and the 4.8-liter V10's 552-horsepower output wasn't super impressive when it came out, but it integrated a ton of expertise Toyota gained from its F1 team in the early to mid 2000s. Unfortunately, it didn't sell well. Last year, we found there were a few new models sitting on dealer lots, five years after the 500-model run ended. Still, it looks like Toyota may not have given up on the idea of a race-derived flagship for Lexus, at least based on this prototype running around the Nürburgring this week.

At first glance, the car pictured here looks like an LFA with the Nürburgring Package and some camouflage on the front and rear fenders. If you look closely, you can see that the fenders are significantly wider than on the standard LFA. Based on the license plate, this appears to be the same car with two different sets of wheels. Lexus may simply be swapping out worn tires, or they may be testing different wheel and tire combinations to fit the wider wheel wells.

Anything beyond this is just speculation. There have been rumors of a new flagship Lexus sports car that sits atop the LC 500 and LC 500h. We saw the Toyota GR Super Sport Concept back in January, though that car looks nothing like what we see here. As much as we would love that sweet Yamaha co-developed V10 to carry over, we're not holding our breath. Some sort of hybrid powertrain is almost a certainty. Maybe Lexus and Toyota could pull some tech from its Le Mans-winning TS050 Hybrid race car.

It goes without saying that the LFA is yesterday’s news. The final example of the breed rolled off the assembly line in December 2012, and curiously enough, the Toyota Mirai is manufactured at the Motomachi plant these days.

Even more curious is that Lexus sold two LFAs in 2018 in the United States of America, all-new models. As if that wasn’t puzzling enough, no fewer than seven are still looking for their first owners. All told, Lexus produced 500 examples over the course of two years.

The LFA still beggars belief, partly thanks to the 1LR-GUE developed exclusively for this application. A ten-cylinder engine made from exotic materials and capable of up to 9,500 rpm before the fuel cut-off kicks in, the powerplant was co-developed with Yamaha.

Lexus also took a different approach with the layout of the powertrain. Even though the LFA is a supercar, the engine is located up front instead of the middle of the vehicle. Despite this arrangement, the weight distribution is close to perfect (48 percent up front and 52 percent over the rear axle).

Not even the Ferrari 488 Pista can match that (41.5 percent and 58.5 percent), which goes to show that Lexus poured all of its know-how into making the LFA as good as possible. Turning our attention back to those two models sold in 2018, care to guess where they were sold?

According to Lexus, one LFA was bought off the dealer showroom in Massachusetts and the other in Georgia. These states aren’t exactly known for supercar ownership, but hey, intricacies make up the beauty of life.

If you were wondering how much an LFA is worth these days, DuPont Registry has eight listed on their website. The most expensive of the lot is $448,900, featuring 527 miles on the clock. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an example with 2,835 miles on the odometer is $378,900.

When it was new, the LFA retailed at $375,000 in the United States. The Nurburgring performance package leveled up the MSRP to $445,000. Lexus is open to a successor thanks to a high number of requests from current owners and prospective customers, but Toyota called dibs this time around.

More to the point, the GR Super Sport Concept is coming in 2020 with 1,000 horsepower courtesy of “hybrid-electric technology honed through Toyota’s participation in the FIA World Endurance Championship.”

Even more curious is that Lexus sold two LFAs in 2018 in the United States of America, all-new models. As if that wasn’t puzzling enough, no fewer than seven are still looking for their first owners. All told, Lexus produced 500 examples over the course of two years.

The Lexus LF-A arrived in 2010 as a carbon-fiber-bodied, V10-powered supercar. It was only on sale for two model years, and production officially ended in December of 2012. Now, almost eight years after its demise, Lexus is still selling brand-new LF-As. A recent report by GoodCarBadCar highlighted the sale of one brand-new LF-A in September of this year. To make things even stranger, Lexus managed to sell two other LF-As back in February.

Look for the Lexus LF-A online, and you’ll only find used low mileage examples selling for well over $500,000. While the LF-As $375,000 original base price was nothing to scoff at, these new inflated values are on track to double the MSRP. So let’s pretend we’re all filthy rich and we must have Japan’s most incredible supercar. There are less than 10 LF-As currently available for sale on a national level, half of which don’t even have a listed price.

Searching for new models yields absolutely zero results, meaning that most of these cars most likely selling privately. These LF-As are likely residing in dealerships as props to get people into the door, never reaching the online market. A dealership that has purposely saved a car for almost eight years most likely isn’t in a rush to sell, so it may take a sizeable sum to get one. Given the inflated prices of the used examples, expect to pay close to the $700,000 range for a brand-new LF-A.

While the Lexus LF-A may seem elusive to us, Lexus has done a great job keeping track of where these rare supercars are. In 2017, Lexus claimed there were 12 LF-As left in showrooms across the United States. In that same year, Lexus managed to sell 3 of those LF-As. With two more cars selling in 2018 and three in 2019, inventory is quickly dwindling. In February of this year, two LF-As were sold, presumably at the same time.

If we factor in the current sales figures for 2020, there is just one brand-new LF-A left. If we can easily piece this together, then the owner of the final LF-A most likely has as well. Given its unique status, we should not expect to see the car sell for a while. Effectively being a 1 of 1, the final LF-As value is truly unpredictable, and if the used examples are anything to go by, it should be eye-wateringly expensive.

The Lexus LF-A began development in 2000, with the first concept-car making its debut in 2003. As the team continued developing the LF-A, Lexus decided to produce a carbon fiber frame, instead of an aluminum one, which required scrapping most of the completed work. Aside from requiring a brand-new structure, the LF-A also utilized a bespoke V10 engine.

The 553-hp supercar also included a carbon fiber body, aiding to keep the weight down. If all of this is beginning to sound expensive, it’s because it was. Despite selling each LF-A at a base price of $375,000, Lexus still lost a significant amount of money on each car produced. Lexus limited production to just 500 units worldwide, making 20 cars per month. If the standard LFA was already an expensive and limited car, we can’t even imagine what the very last one could go for.