From the June 1991 concern of Automobile and Driver.

The brand new Lexus SC400 coupe is as rounded and slippery and slick as a caplet of Further-Energy Tylenol. The large dif­ference is, this child will trigger complications.

Think about that your home funds and your youngsters’ new footwear rely indirectly on gross sales of Mercedes-Benz or BMW or Cadillac or Lincoln vehicles. The Lexus model has already skimmed your gravy with the LS400, a four-door that lures away your prospects like a reduction Hope Dia­mond. However that is solely the four-door market. You have nonetheless acquired your coupe prospects. They’d no extra be seen in a four-door than they might in a leisure swimsuit. However, amazingly, you may present them an artificial coupe—what quantities to a sedan with half the variety of doorways—they usually write the verify. Fairly nifty gambit so long as it really works.

Should you’re counting on artificial coupes to maintain the youngsters in Keds, then the migraine throb will kick in as quickly as your customized­ers see this actual coupe from Lexus, the model that may do no mistaken within the four-­door market. As a result of this isn’t a made­-over sedan. It is a new automotive, with a completely new look, a brand new suspension, and a brand new persona. About all of the SC400 coupe shares with the LS400 sedan is the extravagantly clean and highly effective 4­-cam, 32-valve V-8, which everyone loves already.

Beginning to fear in regards to the repo man coming for the Sony, leaving the youngsters with out Sesame Road? Effectively, this subsequent bit of stories will not assist. Lexus boss J. Da­vis Illingworth says, “We’ll value this automotive the place we expect the customized­ers are.” In plain English, which means a window sticker low sufficient to maneuver the iron. The synthetic-coupe makers typi­cally take two doorways away from their se­dans and make up for it by elevating the worth. Lexus has baked a contemporary new recipe and can undercut the sedan’s $40,285 base value.

How can different manufacturers compete? First, they’d should be as critical about busi­ness as Toyota is. The world’s third-larg­est automaker is decided to seize an enormous hunk of the market’s sirloin. Two years in the past—again when Lexus was only a identify, not a automotive—there have been doubts {that a} Japa­nese sedan might ever sit on the head ta­ble with Mercedes and BMW. Toyota shouldered its means into status territory the old style means—with a greater product. The LS400 has high quality, consolation, and efficiency; the sellers handle the shoppers; and the worth is true. It is so simple as that. And amaz­ingly, the bystanders are as charmed because the patrons. Even taxi drivers hacking alongside of their drained Caprices converse admir­ingly of Lexus.

For the opponents, this SC400 coupe quantities to piling on. It is a energy play. The coupe just isn’t held again by a must share components with the sedan. The coupe is constructed to do what a coupe ought to do: be fashionable to the attention, be energetic to the contact, be spectacular to the Sharper Im­age set. This quantities to the creation of a brand new automotive, and few carmakers are critical sufficient in regards to the coupe enterprise to go to all that hassle. Toyota, maybe alone on this planet now, is that critical. That is why the SC400 will trigger so many head­aches for the opposite fancy labels.

The variations between coupe and sedan are in all places. The coupe—bought in Japan because the Soarer—is about six inch­es shorter general on a five-inch-shorter wheelbase. Observe is about 1.5 inches nar­rower, and weight about 180 kilos lighter. Each use the identical V-8 to drive the rear wheels (an inline-six might be­come out there in autumn, with an op­tional five-speed handbook transmission).

The mechanical variations encompass­ing the V-8 are many: The coupe has a shorter first gear within the four-speed auto­matic and a shorter remaining drive for higher acceleration, bigger disc brakes throughout, sixteen-inch wheels as an alternative of the sedan’s fifteens, a completely completely different suspension for improved dynamics, and some radical improvements to astound the Fashionable Science reader. Topmost on this listing is the radiator fan powered by a hy­draulic motor. When requested why he used this strategy, chief engineer Seihachi Takahashi light into Japanese inscruta­bility. “As a result of it is one of the simplest ways,” he stated. “Quieter.”

Some behind-the-scenes probing re­vealed the supply of the quietness. The same old thermostatically managed electrical fan is both off, wherein case it is com­pletely silent, or it’s on and due to this fact producing a substantial air-rush sound. The hydraulic fan is a variable­-speed association, so, in some modes, it could be on however at such low speeds you will not discover.

When the LS400 sedan was previewed within the press almost two years in the past, it usually obtained excessive reward for its engi­neering and condescension for its styl­ing. “Kind of like a Mercedes,” individuals stated. “Acquired an enormous grille in entrance.” Japanese vehicles are created by groups which can be typical­ly organized fairly in a different way from the way in which the remainder of the world does it. In Ja­pan, the physique designers report back to the chief engineer, who has veto energy over something he would not like.

Detroit designers would quite stroll picket traces than work below an engineer. They assume that an engineer would divert them towards stern and boring vehicles. Possibly. However that is not what occurred within the case of the SC400. Chief engineer Takahashi is thought to have fallen in love with the primary clay proposal despatched to Japan from Toyota’s Calty Design Analysis, Inc., in Newport Seashore, California. Takahashi now calls the automotive an “authentic American design.” He appreciated the early form a lot that he would not hand over on it, despite the fact that it was, on the time, unbuildable by all identified strategies.

Principal designers on the undertaking have been two California males: Dennis Camp­bell, who had stints at Ford and Chrysler earlier than becoming a member of Calty in 1980, and Erwin Lui, whose profession started at Calty in 1982. Lui now speaks of the SC400 as a “de­signer’s dream come true,” and he cred­its the engineers. There have been instances when he too was prepared to surrender and calm down the design to one thing extra standard so it could possibly be constructed, however Takahashi would not let him. Takahashi was decided about this coupe, and he was backed by an equally decided entrance workplace. Collectively they went the additional kilo­meter to discover a solution to construct a sensible automotive within the designers’ form.

The issues all stemmed from the rounded nature of the SC400’s design, notably the nostril, which seems semicircular as you look down on it from above. All that roundness eliminates the corners. After all! However then the place do you set all the mandatory elements which can be usually pushed out into the corners? Should you look below the hood of the LS400, there is not any empty house. So how might the engineers presumably match the identical gear into even tighter quarters?

Think about the headlights. Entrance cor­ners are good for headlights. However whenever you spherical off the entrance corners, and roll again the vertical face above the bumper in order that it rapidly blends into the sloping hood, the conventional headlight house is gone. The headlights find yourself again in opposition to the radiator bulkhead the place you’d should do a significant teardown simply to alter a bulb. What to do? Initially, the entire lighting was meant to suit right into a single clean module in every nook. However that wasn’t attainable. The projector high-beam a part of the module required an excessive amount of depth. The ultimate resolution sepa­rated the excessive beams from the module and positioned them inboard, the place depth behind was higher, with their very own ovoid lenses, and on the identical time creat­ed what’s going to absolutely change into one of many SC400’s most talked-about particulars.

As soon as the design was accepted by Toyota, Lui went to Japan to see it via the transition to a manufacturing form. With the designer available, Toyota thought, the true essence of the unique would extra doubtless be preserved within the remaining automotive. Once more, extra proof of Toyota’s willpower. Lui remembers confronting the “exhausting factors” for the primary time. Laborious factors characterize equip­ment that needs to be within the automotive, corresponding to the highest of the consumption manifold and the bat­tery. The engineers got here to the clay model and drove pegs into it to the depth of the exhausting factors. Quite a lot of pegs poked exterior the rounded form. Some surfaces have been moved to accommodate them, however Lui says that Takahashi did ev­erything he might to relocate and re­form inside elements. The coupe’s air cleaner, for instance, is a completely dif­ferent form than the sedan’s. We discover additionally that the coupe’s entrance suspension positions its higher wishbones a lot decrease within the automotive, which might enable extra space within the engine compartment.

The unique design had an excellent smaller grille opening in entrance, too small to chill the engine, Takahashi stated. So the opening was enlarged. To maintain it as small as attainable, nonetheless, the engineers reached for a technique generally used on racing vehicles however uncommon on the highway—they constructed a duct that channels the entire incoming air via the radiator.

Further engineering is obvious in two different areas too, areas that may absolutely make the coupe friendlier to passengers. The doorways swing on advanced four-bar hinges that transfer the entrance and the highest of the doorways farther out of the opening than regular hinges would. Again-seat passen­gers will even recognize the facility fea­ture of the passenger-side entrance seat that slides it ahead on its monitor when the backrest is folded. Each of those options repay in simpler entry and exit.

We have pushed solely preproduction sam­ples of the SC400 at this level, so we’ll maintain the driving impressions common. This automotive shares the inside temper of the sedan—superbly sculptured shapes coated in high-quality textures and pastel col­ors. Leather-based is normal gear, as is chook’s-eye maple sprint and door trim. The devices, as on the sedan, are self-illuminated at any time when they’re oper­ating, which makes for an exceptionally legible show. The windshield slopes steeply, but it surely’s positioned properly ahead, thereby minimizing the solar-cooker ef­fect on the occupant’s laps.

We have enormously admired the four-door for the way in which wherein it combines a silent, plush journey with trusty dealing with. The coupe’s persona is sort of completely different. The physique is quiet, however the engine talks. Toyota thought a coupe must be sporty. The shorter gearing will get the V-8 up within the revs faster. The retuned in­take and exhaust acoustics now flip the engine sound right into a scream whenever you tip into it, albeit a refined scream. And the whipped cream has been eradicated from the journey. The coupe’s motions are extremely damped. You undoubtedly really feel the contours of the highway now, though a lot of the harshness is filtered out.

This automotive is superbly executed, very a lot a designer piece each inside and outside. In our view, the plush silence of the LS400 appears a loftier accomplishment, but the SC400 has the sporting angle that is completely lacking from the sedan. Clearly, these two vehicles are meant for various patrons.

And that, in flip, means complications for a brand new group of sellers. The artificial­-coupe enterprise won’t ever be the identical.