Lexus LFA Inspection: Should we buy or not?

We are going to inspect a 2002 Lexus LFA. Now, I always ask you when I bring you along to answer a few questions, and that is, should we buy the car? And if so, how much should we spend on it? Now, this is one of my biggest customers. He's pretty cool. I shot a video on his Jaguar RS GT, which was a fun video. And as you might imagine, or you can tell right now, I'm not in my truck or in my Impala. My Impala is a little bit different. I'm not in my truck or in my Impala. My Impala is ripped apart. And I'll show you a picture of it. The dashboard is all ripped apart because a mouse, it got really cold here, and a mouse crawled up in the middle of the night and got into my heater and blew it all up. So we're changing it. It's a whole nightmare. So anyways, thanks, mom. I'm driving my mom's car right now to visit this dealership and run through the inspection. In this case, it's an all carbon fiber body. So I really want to make sure all the panels are aligned. And I'll walk you through the whole process like we've done in the past. But as always, leave a comment below. Let me know what you think and how much you would spend or avoid or any comments that you have. So that's all coming up today on this episode of Ride Along. Oh my god, this car is so funny. Before arriving, I asked the dealership to put the vehicle up in the air so I could inspect the underneath and verify certain numbered pieces used to identify this particular car. I asked them to do this because it takes a few extra minutes to safely lift vehicles this low. As you can see, 096 is handwritten during the manufacturing phase. But by the way, it looks backwards on screen. So I'm going to go ahead and show you the Also, I verified these numbers against several other parts of the car. And they all were consistent, which, of course, is good. Next, because the car's odometer reads 82 miles, I want to look at the carbon fiber undertray for nicks and scuffs, as well as the incredibly intricate suspension to notice if anything looks unusual for a vehicle with miles this low. Again, everything checks out perfect. No leaks, no scuffs, and all the numbers match the sell sheet. So I'm going to go ahead and look at the odometer. While the car was up in the air, I noticed minor scuffing on the front lower lip, which is common on any car, but especially one this low. So it's something to take note of. Likewise, tires were in good shape. And the rims were absolutely perfect. So I asked them to put the car back down on the ground. When working on exotic cars, traditional scissor lifts don't go low enough to get under the frame. So go-jacks are needed to raise the minimum height. Then, once on the go-jacks, you can lower them to the ground from there. With the car now down on the ground, I like to inspect the interior condition first. Then, later I will test the functionality with the engine running. Guys, I'm in the LFA right now. There's got to be 50 people around me. So it's hard to do a camera shot where I'm talking in it. But I'll do a bunch of voiceover, and I'll show you what I'm looking at. But essentially, what I'm finding is the car is immaculate. There's only 70 miles on it. The biggest thing that I see is there's this layer of dust. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to see it here. But there's a lot of dust. I don't know if you can see that. So there's just kind of goop everywhere on the inside of the car, which can be clean. But it's sort of typical of, let's say, a mechanic getting in and out, in and out. Over 70 miles, that's a lot of in and out, an abnormal amount. Otherwise, the car looks pretty spectacular. I don't find any major damage. Next thing I'm going to do is look at the gaps and make sure all the seams and the gaps. Because this is a fully carbon fiber body. So somebody by hand is peeping through the So it should be fine. But we'll keep looking. But this is what the inside looks like. If you haven't seen one, pretty wild dash in there. And this type of leather gets dirty very easy. I'm seeing a lot of that in the door scuffs, in the door. Not the end of the world. But again, this is something I need to let the owner know. Suede. It's pretty sweet. After noticing a few interior wear marks, I began my initial exterior walk through. The paintwork on the outside of the car is pretty good. The paint was in above average to excellent condition, because it had never been washed and only had a very light covering of dust on it. It had spent most of its life undercover and in a corner of a warehouse. It could use a polish, sealant, and wax, but not much more than that. Now to the meat and potatoes. This is the LFA's 4.8 liter V10, which redlines at a glorious 9,000 RPM. The engine is constructed using forged aluminum pistons, forged titanium connecting rods, and solid titanium valves. The engineers are said to have selected the V10 over the equivalent displacement V8 for its ability to rev higher. And I think we all agree that this thing sounds amazing. After listening for abnormal sounds and knocks and checking all the fluids, all I can find is a layer of dust, which is something I will play with later if this car comes home with us. All right, guys, one of the other things I do when I'm inspecting a car is make sure I take the car cover out and check it out. So here's one of the things that you can find. Now as you can see, there's a stain here. So not the end of the world, but I do need to tell the client that I'm doing that. This isn't the right car either, so I found a clean car, pulled the cover off, and put it on this particular car just so I could see if there's any holes, see if there's any stains, and sure enough, I found a stain. So these are the little things that we need to keep track of. So I'm actually going to look at the key. There's a special carbon or graphite key that comes with this. I've got to check. So all the little things that the owner should expect. These are things you need to think about when you're helping somebody buy a car. Now we're inside again, and I'm letting the car warm up to get everything up to temperature. I want to show you something cool. Again, I can't use my big camera. There's so many people around here. I want to show you something cool that you may not know about the LFA. Back in the day when they were made, and they started out in 2000, this was kind of a big deal. But watch my hand and watch the computer screen. This is basically like a big mouse. You see that screen there? I'm moving my finger back and forth, and it's like a keyboard mouse, and this is your clicker. So if I want to go to climate and change the temperature, click my thumb, and then I'll go to medium, or I'll go to low, or if I want AC off, I can click this. So as a matter of fact, I'm going to go in right now, and I'll show you I want to change the temperature. So I took the AC off. That's the volume. Took the AC off, and now I want to check the heat. And so the heat, you have your buttons here, and the buttons, see how it's raising the temperature? So I'm going to jack the heat up and sweat myself out here to make sure that the heat works. We'll do the same thing over here. Because the temperature's got, the engine's got a little bit of temp, so I'll take the GoPro and show you. Look, there's temp building up, so it's warm enough so that it should produce some heat right now. And I'm going to go in and also change, with my finger here, change where I want it to come out. I want it to come out on the feet, and then we're going to go on high to just make sure. But I can already feel the heat coming out. So basically what I'm doing is checking all the functions as well, making sure all these things, I put in radio station, I put in a CD. Actually, the CD goes right here, which is kind of neat. You slide a CD right in there. And again, there's a little joystick. But yeah, overall, the car's looking pretty good. I'll shoot more outside and underneath parts of the car, and then you can kind of decide. But it's all handcrafted. It's pretty neat. And with 82 miles on it, as you can see right here, 82 miles, there's not a whole lot that's going on. So my job is to come in here and make sure it's as represented. There are some scuffs and little things in the seats that can be cleaned up slash repaired. It's not a big deal at all. But the question is, is this a car you'd buy? There's only 500 made. And if so, what's the price that you would pay for that? So let me know. If you have any questions, guys, shoot me an email at larry at ammo, N-O-I-C dot com. As always, thanks for watching. I love taking you guys around. I try to shoot more stand up with the big camera, but there's about 10 people watching me right now. So I've got to pretend like I'm talking to myself. I'll see you guys next week. Bye.