Speaker 1: Pushkin. If I were to give you a blindfold and
Speaker 1: I line up, UH, the LC and three of your
Speaker 1: competitors Mercedes s l Uh. I don't know what the AUDI?
Speaker 1: A eight? Who you know? You name them? What they
Speaker 1: whatever they may be? UM, could you and I sit
Speaker 1: you inside the car? Can you tell? Can you tell
Speaker 1: them apart? Do you know which one is the LC?
Speaker 1: If you? If you have your h if you if
Speaker 1: I give you a blindfold, yes, I'm confident I will
Speaker 1: know LC right away from Lexus and Pushkin Industries. This
Speaker 1: is go and see. I'm Malcolm Glabba. In the last
Speaker 1: two episodes, we investigated the sound of the Lexus LC
Speaker 1: sports car. In this episode, we're heading to the track
Speaker 1: and in preparation we got a briefing from Yessushi Muto Mutusan,
Speaker 1: the chief engineer of the LC, in his fifties, salt
Speaker 1: and pepper hair, a little bit of an athlete's swagger.
Speaker 1: It was the day before we went to the track.
Speaker 1: We were at the main Lexus building in a conference room.
Speaker 1: Mutusan came early. The Lexus people were always early, remember
Speaker 1: O Mutanashi, mindful hospitality. These are not people who would
Speaker 1: dream of inconveniencing their guests. Mutosan spent years working on
Speaker 1: the LC, obsessing over every detail. So I asked him
Speaker 1: if he would know whether or not he were sitting
Speaker 1: at an I'll see if he were blindfolded. He said absolutely,
Speaker 1: and of course he would. Mutosan knows how the car
Speaker 1: sounds and moves and feels, but that wasn't his point too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's explained to me the meaning of the of the
Speaker 1: drawing on the whiteboard. Halfway through our briefing, Mutosan stood
Speaker 1: up and drew a simple stick figure of a seated
Speaker 1: driver on the whiteboard, both legs extended. He wanted to
Speaker 1: demonstrate how designing a car at a place like Lexus works.
Speaker 1: You don't design the car then fit the driver in it.
Speaker 1: You do the opposite. You start with the driver yea
Speaker 1: from the side. So when we decide on the package,
Speaker 1: we first decide on a driver's position. It's a heel
Speaker 1: point of the axel point to your hip point. Heel point,
Speaker 1: Mutosan drew a line between the hip point of the
Speaker 1: stick figure driver and the floor of the car. The
Speaker 1: heel point meaning the position of the foot on the pedal.
Speaker 1: In every car that distance is different. In a big
Speaker 1: sedan like the Lexus LS, it's two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five millimeters from the driver's hip to the car's floorboards.
Speaker 1: In an LC, it's two hundred so two inches lower,
Speaker 1: which changes the angle of your hips, a subtle difference,
Speaker 1: which in turn changes the entire geometry of the car
Speaker 1: and the driver's position. And from there we went deep,
Speaker 1: deep into the weeds, until I felt like I too
Speaker 1: could climb blindfolded into an LC and know exactly where
Speaker 1: I was. You may remember from two episodes ago that
Speaker 1: the origin of the LC came when the head of Toyota,
Speaker 1: Akio Toyota, went to a product launch at the legendary
Speaker 1: Concourse to Elegance in Pebble Beach, California, and an auto
Speaker 1: writer told him in front of everyone that Lexus was fine,
Speaker 1: but boring ta and never boried, never boried. At least
Speaker 1: one well respected journalists you know was was doing an
Speaker 1: interview with doctor sonn mentioned his feeling that the Lexus
Speaker 1: brand was boring, and that was both a surprise and
Speaker 1: a shock Tokyo son And so when he came back,
Speaker 1: he said to all of these guys here, you don't
Speaker 1: never want to hear that maybe he has a very
Speaker 1: Step one in the anti boring campaign was making a
Speaker 1: sports car that sounds exciting. This episode is about step two,
Speaker 1: a sports car that feels exciting to drive, which is
Speaker 1: a far more involved process than you might think. Lexus
Speaker 1: has six test tracks, most of them in Japan. There's
Speaker 1: one at the main facility in Toyota City, another in
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Nagoya, one in Higashifuji, one way up
Speaker 1: north near Sapporo where they do winter testing. There's one
Speaker 1: more in Whitman, Arizona, outside Phoenix, a massive track that
Speaker 1: Lexus shares with Toyota that's ten miles around, the biggest
Speaker 1: test track in the world. You can land a jumbo
Speaker 1: jet in the middle of it, and every morning the
Speaker 1: sweepers have to go out and get the rattlesnakes off
Speaker 1: the tarmac where they gathered for warmth during the night.
Speaker 1: But the crown jewel of Lexus test tracks Ishimoyama, about
Speaker 1: half an hour up into the hills outside of Toyota City,
Speaker 1: brand new, sixteen hundred acres across two mountaintops. Eventually there
Speaker 1: will be ten thousand people working there. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is so hidden away you'd never find it without directions.
Speaker 1: It's not on Google Maps. You can't get in unless
Speaker 1: you work for Lexus, and you can't drive on the
Speaker 1: track unless you're certified Lexus driver. Lexus let Us in
Speaker 1: Shimu Yama is inspired by the most famous racing course
Speaker 1: in the world, the Nordschleifa at the Nurburgring in Germany's Rhineland.
Speaker 1: The Nurburgring is not a flat oval like the Indie
Speaker 1: five hundred. It's a road course twelve point nine miles
Speaker 1: of twists and turns, a thousand feet of elevation, changes,
Speaker 1: dense forest, medieval villages, the Eiffel Mountains. Current lap record
Speaker 1: is held by a Lamborghini Aventador. Second place is a
Speaker 1: portion of nine eleven g T two rs. Race and
Speaker 1: sports cars are perfected here. Every curve is numbered and mythologized.
Speaker 1: The Nurburgring Nordschleifa is petrol Head Nirvana, former course record holder.
Speaker 1: By the way, the Lexus LFA Bananas Limited Editions supercar
Speaker 1: that Lexus made back in twenty eleven. So Shimo Yama
Speaker 1: is Lexus's answer to the Nordschleifa, a European style road
Speaker 1: course in the hills of southern Japan. It's insanely beautiful.
Speaker 1: The road cuts through the side of the mountains, surrounded
Speaker 1: by tall Japanese pines. When we first got there, we
Speaker 1: stood out on the observation deck of the visitors center
Speaker 1: and all you can hear our birds chirping, and insects buzzing,
Speaker 1: and a blue sky above. Until Sweet Jesus is every
Speaker 1: curve a replica of a curve. Our pre track briefing
Speaker 1: came from our guide, Paul Williamson. They're not direct replicas,
Speaker 1: but they kind of said, hey, you know, I really
Speaker 1: like to turn seventeen A, and then they go out
Speaker 1: and measure it and figure out what the grade change
Speaker 1: and how the road is cambered, and they say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can do something like seventeen A and so so
Speaker 1: basically they took kind of thirty eight of their favorite
Speaker 1: spots of the Nervagring and built them in here along
Speaker 1: with all these other European type road surfaces. And you
Speaker 1: saw some of those undulations as we're driving in. I
Speaker 1: pointed that out, so you can see some some big
Speaker 1: areas where you know, if one more careless with speed,
Speaker 1: you can get everyonere and careless with speed. Classic euphemism.
Speaker 1: It's what you say when the highway patrol officer pulls
Speaker 1: you over. Officer, I got careless with speed. So we've
Speaker 1: got some fifteen degree ascents, twelve degree descents, pretty steep areas.
Speaker 1: Some of the track is perfectly smooth asphalt. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not sure why, but Japanese asphalt doesn't
Speaker 1: look like American asphalt. It looks like a putting green,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. So this country road course
Speaker 1: that you'll experience today simulates many different kinds of European roads.
Speaker 1: It has seven unique road surfaces. So some is perfect smooth,
Speaker 1: gorgeous Japanese asphalt or probably closer to Germany fault like
Speaker 1: an autumn but others, and we'll ask Osakisan to do
Speaker 1: some lamps for you where it uses the off lane,
Speaker 1: and then the off lane will have little ripple surfaces.
Speaker 1: It'll have kind of a bolden block. Osakisan, he's Alexis
Speaker 1: master driver who agreed to take us out on the course.
Speaker 1: He's driving Alexis LC five hundred and in fact, as
Speaker 1: you're being briefed by Paul I see Osakisan down below.
Speaker 1: In the off ramp area, taking three helmets out of
Speaker 1: the back of a gleaming white LC. I asked Paul
Speaker 1: if Osakisan and his fellow drivers keep a record of
Speaker 1: the fastest times around the course, like they do at
Speaker 1: the Nrburgring. He said no, not officially, because of course
Speaker 1: you know they do, like a secret list stashed away somewhere.
Speaker 1: We go downstairs to meet Osakisan. He's slender, light on
Speaker 1: his feet, like an athlete. He's a surfer late forties,
Speaker 1: early fifties, although he seemed younger. He's what a Lexus
Speaker 1: is called takumi, a master, only one of two Takumi
Speaker 1: masters of driving. Feel in the entire Alexis company? You
Speaker 1: joined Lexus or Toyota? Yes? What did you think? You?
Speaker 1: What did you go into? Nineteen eighty five? So how
Speaker 1: long does it take to be certified as a Takumi driver?
Speaker 1: How many years needs you going? In June? Approximately about
Speaker 1: twenty five to thirty years. Oh wow. Kasaki San's job
Speaker 1: is to drive prototypes as they're being developed and provide feedback.
Speaker 1: He's a frequent visitor to the Nrburgring, typically drives two
Speaker 1: hundred laps at a visit. Did I did I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that you you spent two years arguing about for
Speaker 1: a change in the angle of the steering wheel. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's actually he was involved in that. What model was that?
Speaker 1: So we started that discussion from GS, but then h
Speaker 1: LC was the actual first car that we're able to
Speaker 1: apply that change in the angle. What was the how
Speaker 1: much of a change in angle did you wanta? Angle?
Speaker 1: Two degrees? Two degrees? Was it hard to convince people
Speaker 1: to change the angle of the string ways? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, not only with the LC, but changing the
Speaker 1: steering angles actually also affixed the platform of other vehicles too,
Speaker 1: so you know, to really make any evolution as far
Speaker 1: as mindset, you know, that was that certainly took a
Speaker 1: lot of determination to change. Twenty five years to get
Speaker 1: certified as at Takumi, two years of arguing to get
Speaker 1: the engineers back at Toyota City to tilt the LC
Speaker 1: steering two degrees forward because the proposed steering wheel angle
Speaker 1: just didn't feel right. Osaki San is a student of EI,
Speaker 1: which is one of the Japanese martial arts. At one
Speaker 1: point he took out his cell phone and showed us
Speaker 1: the photos of him working with his instructor Ei is
Speaker 1: the art of drawing a katan a sword in a smooth,
Speaker 1: controlled manner. I A I EI. So listening there you go,
Speaker 1: let's see that. Yeah, it's an art to basically sword
Speaker 1: um um. So yeah, it's a form of art. Have
Speaker 1: you been doing this six years? Then Osaki San went
Speaker 1: into a long soliloquy about how similar the philosophy of
Speaker 1: EI was to the philosophy of Lexus savagery and elegance,
Speaker 1: abandon and control. Meanwhile, all I could think about is,
Speaker 1: even though I've been a carnet all my life, I've
Speaker 1: never driven with a race car driver on a closed
Speaker 1: course before. I take that back. Once years ago I
Speaker 1: did a bunch of slalom runs around traffic cones at
Speaker 1: the Consumer Reports Test track, Consumer Reports, they test minivans.
Speaker 1: This is the real deal. I'm in full nine year
Speaker 1: old boy mode. Yeah, let's not been there. Lee. Let's see.
Speaker 1: So this is a we got a what what models?
Speaker 1: This is the twenty nineteen you say, dune in them?
Speaker 1: What they do? Yet it's cosy and this is a
Speaker 1: special edition we called Inspiration Edition. So you'll notice when
Speaker 1: you get inside is a three color interior. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's a white orange and navy interior. Um there's only
Speaker 1: a few extra colors that work well with that combo.
Speaker 1: Pearl white is one of them. And then the Inspiration
Speaker 1: Edition in the US is also coupled with a luned
Speaker 1: slip differential and some other performance features. So it's a
Speaker 1: great handling, great driving, and beautiful style car. So this
Speaker 1: is I'm forgetting it. This is the one with with
Speaker 1: a this is the So this is a gas V eight.
Speaker 1: If you've never driven at full speed around a race
Speaker 1: track before, let me explain a few things. Logically, you
Speaker 1: would think it's a bit scary. Some of the curves
Speaker 1: at Shimoyama are hairpins, and there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: straightaways between them, so Asaki Song would come screaming out
Speaker 1: of a curve, hit the gas, the LC bolts forward,
Speaker 1: you get up, sometimes over one hundred pounds an hour,
Speaker 1: and then right in front of you, almost immediately is
Speaker 1: another curve, which in theory sounds a bit unnerving, except
Speaker 1: first of all, there's a Takumi driver behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: cool as a cucumber, in fact, giggling. And secondly, you're
Speaker 1: in a sports car. I mean, if you were to
Speaker 1: take an suv out on the Shimayama. Each of those
Speaker 1: turns would be terrifying. That's because suv sit up high.
Speaker 1: They have a high center of gravity, as much as
Speaker 1: three feet in a big suv. At high speeds, an
Speaker 1: suv would pitch violently to one side in a corner
Speaker 1: like a ship in rough seas, and if you went
Speaker 1: too fast, it could spin out or even tip over.
Speaker 1: The center of gravity on Alexis LC, by contrast, is
Speaker 1: super low even by sports car standards. Planted on those corners,
Speaker 1: there was almost no body roll at all. We never
Speaker 1: felt anything close to being out of control. There's a second,
Speaker 1: more subtle thing, and for that we have to leave
Speaker 1: shimo Yama for a moment. I promise will return back
Speaker 1: to Toyota City and Muto San stick figure of a
Speaker 1: driver because the way a car handles also comes down
Speaker 1: to its center of gravity and our anatomy from the side.
Speaker 1: So when we decide on the package, who first decide
Speaker 1: on driver's position detailed point of the axel to your
Speaker 1: hip point a heel point. To make a car handle perfectly,
Speaker 1: you want the driver's hips to be as close to
Speaker 1: the center of gravity as possible, so you feel like
Speaker 1: the car is turning with you. Like, imagine for a
Speaker 1: moment that you have to carry a fifty pound package
Speaker 1: on your bicycle. You could put it in a basket
Speaker 1: over the handlebars, but then the bike would be really
Speaker 1: hard to control because the center of gravity, the bulk
Speaker 1: of the weight would be over the front wheel way
Speaker 1: ahead of your hips. But if you strapped those weights
Speaker 1: around your waist, the bike would be much easier to
Speaker 1: control because now all of that weight would be over
Speaker 1: the center of the bike. During our briefing with Mutosan,
Speaker 1: he talked about how hard Lexus worked to bring those
Speaker 1: two points, hips and center of gravity as close as possible.
Speaker 1: This is a twenty millimeter aviation almost same. How unusual
Speaker 1: is that in a in a sportscar sometimes with a
Speaker 1: two seater two hundred to three hundred millimeter gap. Oh well,
Speaker 1: they got a three hundred millimeter gap down to a
Speaker 1: twenty millimeter gap. Then I asked Mutosan why they couldn't
Speaker 1: get that numbered down to zero? What was stopping you
Speaker 1: for having the center of gravity and the hippoint be
Speaker 1: absolutely perfect? I don't know. Does it bother you? Though
Speaker 1: you didn't say no sleep was lost over you didn't
Speaker 1: wake up in the middle of night saying, if only
Speaker 1: it was perfect. He's lying, of course, he totally loses
Speaker 1: sleep over those twenty millimeters. Then there's what happens to
Speaker 1: your feet. In a typical small car, like a sports car,
Speaker 1: the engine intrudes into the middle of the passenger cabin,
Speaker 1: so you have to bring your ankles a little closer
Speaker 1: together to account for the size of the transmission. Muto
Speaker 1: San and his team didn't like that. It didn't feel
Speaker 1: natural to them, so they pushed the engine just a
Speaker 1: little bit forward and the front seats a little bit back.
Speaker 1: They wanted to create more space in the footwell. Mutasan
Speaker 1: drew the difference for us on the whiteboard. Two legs
Speaker 1: angled slightly inwards, two legs extending straight. That's incorrect. How
Speaker 1: subtle is the difference between correct and incorrect on foot position?
Speaker 1: Twenty really made or two so maybe an inch? An inch?
Speaker 1: Now would most of us even notice that smaller difference,
Speaker 1: Maybe not explicitly, or at first, you wouldn't say to
Speaker 1: yourself when you sit in an LCOH, the angles of
Speaker 1: my legs feel just that much better. But there are
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty subtle little variables like that, and when
Speaker 1: you combine them all then you really can sense that
Speaker 1: something's different. The point is that as Osaki San drove
Speaker 1: around the Shima Yama, the way he sat in the car,
Speaker 1: the way it felt to drive, the way I felt
Speaker 1: as he careened around corner wasn't an accident. It was
Speaker 1: a feeling engineered and created by the car's designers up
Speaker 1: without any of the electronics. It's the end of our
Speaker 1: test drive. I thought we were going really fast, but
Speaker 1: Osakisan says that we had driven at about sixty percent
Speaker 1: of our capacity because we had four people in the car, Osakisan, me,
Speaker 1: the translator, and Jacob with his sound equipment. Now, who
Speaker 1: wants to drive at sixty percent capacity? I want to
Speaker 1: go faster, I want to drift, and to do that,
Speaker 1: the driver has to turn off all the electronic monitors
Speaker 1: that are built into modern cars to make them behave
Speaker 1: like responsible citizens. So I'm asking can we turn them off?
Speaker 1: Asaki San says that's not allowed. Basically it requires a
Speaker 1: certain permit to actually drive around in that mode. So
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we could try like in specific point,
Speaker 1: but apparently today we basically obtain a permit to basically
Speaker 1: run in like basically not to overlap the lanes, but
Speaker 1: in order to do so with everything off, you kind
Speaker 1: of need to use the full track, full width of
Speaker 1: the track to cross over both lanes, so that apparently
Speaker 1: requires a different permit application. He wasn't supposed to leave
Speaker 1: tire marks. It's a brand new track, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But then we kicked Jacob and his fancy recording equipment
Speaker 1: out of the car, and Osakisan thinks about it a
Speaker 1: minute longer, and he says, Okay, let's go for it,
Speaker 1: because Lexus isn't supposed to be boring, not anymore, And
Speaker 1: so I have something to boast about at dinner parties.
Speaker 1: I record what happens next on my phone. Oh yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: one of the top ten moments of my life. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: serious drifting line. Yeah yeah, that's great. That was That
Speaker 1: was fantastic. That was one of the most fun I've
Speaker 1: had as a passenger in a car maybe ever. Go
Speaker 1: and See is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily Rosteck
Speaker 1: and Carly Migliari, edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola composed
Speaker 1: our theme music and mixed and mastered our episodes. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jacob Weisberg had of fame, Paul Williamson, the
Speaker 1: Mark Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus executives, engineers and
Speaker 1: designer who participated in our recordings. Go and See is
Speaker 1: a production of Lexus and Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Rapin.