Lexus IS500 | The End of the Road

The 2023 Lexus IS500. And yes, we've already covered this car in our original extensive video, but to be fair, we only drove this car on the track. Thankfully, I got to embrace my alter ego, Silverback Jack, master businessman, and sideways monkey. But in reality, most of the time you spend in the IS500, this is going to be a street car. That's what we're going to be focusing on in this video. The IS500 represents an American-led project to bring Lexus fun back to the brand. This is a car that was designed for our market. And while it is old underneath and old on the inside, it is a fun vehicle. And as a part of this car, much like the RCF and the LC, they are trying to reinvigorate Lexus as a fun brand. So you have things like the Lexus Driving Performance School, the Lexus Driving Signature, where they're trying to make their cars a little less boring, and finally shed their image of disposable architect mobiles that last forever, but you don't think about. This is a car that's supposed to be fun and engaging. From an exterior perspective, I think Lexus has done a very good job. With many of its competitors, like the 4 Series and 3 Series, A4 and C-Class, either getting more boring or more ugly, this is still a handsome looking car. It looks largely muscular and athletic. I think it's probably one of the best looking medium or small size sedans currently on the market. The interior space, though, feels old. If you were alive in 2014, and you were put into a coma right after this car was released, and you woke up today in 2023, you would not be mistaken to think that it is essentially the same car on the inside. And it is. While they've changed things like the center stack, added Apple CarPlay, made it try to feel a little bit more modern, it's still an old car. You have a CD player. It doesn't have the latest NVH material, so it's a little noisier in here than all of its competitors. And a lot of the interior technology just looks and feels a bit dated. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, because unlike many of its competitors, it's gimmickless. Everything's easy to use. Everything's well laid out. It's a very logical cabin. The interior space, the seats are lovely. They're very comfortable. While they don't have the most adjustment, they are a comfortable seat to be in for a long period of time. Back seat's large enough for medium-sized adults. The rear seats do fold down. And you have a full-size trunk, making this a true car that you could drive every single day, go on the grocery run, take your kids to school, and then pound on this thing on the weekends. So with that, though, let's head in the shop and put this thing up on the list. In the shop with a Lexus IS500. This represents an F-Performance model versus an F-Sport vehicle. The difference being this is a more street-focused than track-focused car. And to be honest, as we mentioned in the beginning of this video, it's sort of a throwback product. If you love Lexus, you love non-disposable luxury sedans that are going to live for a very long time. If you do all your maintenance, you're probably going to love this car. This is based on the IS350. It gains about 150 pounds, which means this is almost 3,900 pounds. It's a very heavy sedan. It takes essentially the front subframe off of the GSF, all of the suspension links, which means it's all aluminum in the front. It has AVS dampers or adaptive dampers, which have been tuned for the increased weight and horsepower. And it takes the rear subframe with some modifications off of the standard IS350, which means it's a mix of steel and aluminum. The other thing to bring up as well is there's a Yamaha Performance damper in the rear of this car. It also has a Torsen differential versus a TVD or torque vectoring diff or an open diff. So, this car can do hellacious sleds like we did in the original IS500 video. When it comes to drivetrain, you have Lexus's ubiquitous 5-liter. It is naturally aspirated. In this guise, it makes about 472 horsepower, which is essentially the same as the RCF and slightly less than the LC500. The LC500, in comparison, has two airboxes and sound tubes that feed the cabin with all the glorious 5-liter noises. This has a single airbox with a flapper in the front, and it does have, sadly, AVC or active sound control or whatever the hell it's called. Essentially, it has fake engine noise. Thankfully, unlike many of the modern cars, you can actually turn it off. It does not get the coolers off of an RCF, making this an F Performance model versus an F Sport model. It no longer has the trans cooler like the original pre-production cars. I'm sure it's a dealer-installed option, but honestly, this isn't because it also doesn't have an oil cooler. If you lap this thing hard, very quickly, you're going to run into cooling issues. It puts its power down through an 8-speed automatic gearbox, essentially the identical gearbox found in the RCF. It's what dates this car the most. It is not by any means the fastest shifting gearbox or even the smoothest, but we'll lock up the torque converter to attempt to remedy some of those issues, but compared to something like a modern ZF 8-speed automatic, this feels incredibly dated. Past that though, I think it's time to take this thing for a quick street drive. Setting off on the Lexus IS500. That V8 is why you buy this car. It's why you make all the excuses about why you buy this car. It makes honest V8 noises in 2023, and it has a hell of a lot of character. Is it the fastest thing in the world? No. Is it the best sounding V8 in the world? No, but you can get it in a sedan, a family sedan that is under $70,000, assuming you can get one of these cars. When you take it out of sport plus and you put it back into normal, it becomes a Lexus IS, a relatively comfortable quiet modern luxury sedan with some excellent seats. It's a car you know you can get into every single day. You know it will turn over and start, and it's not going to cost you an ass load of money to run as you take it to work, ferry your kids to school, and just deal with the daily grind. And that's the best thing about this car, because once you start nitpicking at some of the details of the IS500, it's a hard sell, at least purely objectively, but you don't drive spec sheets or stat sheets, and that's something we harp on at least today. Cars now are becoming increasingly disposable and soulless and lacking any real sense of charisma, and that's something that this car doesn't have. It doesn't have that problem. It has character, and when you're dealing with the daily grind like I am right now, stuck behind a Honda Pilot doing 10 miles an hour underneath the speed limit, you don't really care about the 0 to 60 or necessarily even how little NVH is translated in the cabin. You care that at least you are in a car that makes you smile when you drive it, and that's the joy of the IS500. In our original video, you know, we beat the piss out of this car. We drove it on track, and while that was incredibly fun, outside of maybe the Lexus performance driving school that you can do when you get one of these cars or an LC or RCF, you're never going to take this car to the racetrack. You're going to be trying to drive it to and from work. All right, past my philosophical conversation about the IS500, you know, what's it like to drive? If you haven't seen our original video, what's it actually like to live with? Well, it's really soft. It is a very compliant cruiser. It's a little bit noisier than a modern BMW, Lexus, IES, or an A4, or even a G70. The architecture of this car is older than those vehicles, so more NVH makes its way into it, particularly tire noise. These Bridgestones are a little bit noisy, and they don't generate a ton of grip to sort of offset that noise. And when you start to drive it a little bit harder, I'll put it back into Sport Plus, put it into manual mode. This eight-speed automatic right out of the RCF is definitely the weak point. While it does let you bounce rev level like I just did, it does sound amazing when you pound on this car. It's the worst part about this vehicle is the gearbox. It's slow, it downshifts at weird times, it doesn't really rev match that well. And when you drive this gearbox in like an RCF, we have a RCF track edition that we have at the same time as this car, it really exposes its deficiencies. It's a gearbox that constantly is gear hunting, it downshifts at weird times, and the smoothness of engagement is not particularly amazing. But you can still have some old-school fun in this car. You can still get the ass out of a car like this, which is one of the reasons you buy this thing. It makes you smile. But past that though, I think it's time for us to wrap up this video and head into the final thoughts. Final thoughts on the Lexus IS500. Yes, this car is a dinosaur, but no, I do not think it belongs in a museum. This is a car I'm about to make a lot of excuses for because it has character, something that is missing from many of its German counterparts that feel like soulless, lifeless lease mobiles. This car has a 5-liter V8 in 2023 that revs over 7,000 rpm, has honest-to-god induction noise, and it makes you feel something while you drive it. No, it's nowhere as fast as a B58, no, the gearbox is definitely not as good as a ZF 8-speed, and the interior technology by modern standards isn't great. But it's comfortable, you know it's going to be reliable, and it makes you laugh. And that's really why this car exists. Yes, you're going to make a lot of excuses for it, but again, it's a car you know you can keep for 10 years, and it has this inkling of fun, and that's something we largely forget about now, particularly with modern cars. With that though, thanks for watching, I hope to see you soon.