The Lexus SC 300 Is a Reminder of a Different Lexus

This This is a 1997 Lexus SC300 and it's a look back at a totally different era of Lexus. In the days before SUVs and crossovers took over, luxury coupes were a big deal. Every luxury brand had to have one and the SC was Lexus's. Today I'm going to review this original old school SC300 and show you all of its quirks Works and features. Before I get started, big news, this SC300 is currently for sale and it's being auctioned live on Cars and Bids. This is a special car, it's a one-owner SC300. The owner is selling it, he bought it new in August 1997 and he's owned it here in California ever since and it can be yours on Cars and Bids. Once you finish watching this video, click the link in the description below to visit the live auction for this SC300, where you can bid on it and buy it only on Cars and Bids. Alright, time for the quirks and features of the original Lexus SC, and I'm going to start with a few basics, an overview, to put this car in context. So, the SC was a big deal back when it came out, a big luxury coupe. It seems crazy in a world where BMW now has nine SUVs to imagine a big luxury coupe being a big deal, but it was. In fact, this car was considered so important for Lexus. that it was one of the vehicles that the Lexus brand launched with, one of the very first three when it first came out. There was the ES, the entry-level sedan, the LS, the luxury sedan, and soon after, the SC, which was the sport coupe. And back then, basically every luxury brand had a rival to this car. Acura had the Legend and later the CL, BMW had the 3 Series Coupe and the 8 Series, Lincoln had the Mark 8, Buick had the Riviera, Mercedes had the CL, Jaguar had the XJS. This was a tremendously popular segment in the late 80s and early 90s. And so Lexus, they're launching a luxury brand, Well, they got to have a luxury coupe Now, it's worth pointing out that the Lexus SC was also sold in other markets as a Toyota. It was called the Toyota Soarer, but it was developed first and foremost as a Lexus to help launch the Lexus brand, particularly in North America, and the Toyota version came later. It's the same deal with the Lexus LS. That was later rebadged as the Toyota Celsior in other markets, but it was initially developed as a Lexus to be a Lexus and to make people feel Lexus-y. Now the Lexus SC was offered in two flavors. The base model, the SC300, that was the vast majority of sales, and it had a 3-liter straight-six, better known as the famed Toyota 2JZ 6-cylinder that was also in the Supra, the Lexus GS300, and many other Toyota and Lexus models. This powertrain is famous for its durability, reliability, and tuning potential, but in this car, it was a luxury engine in a luxury car. It had 225 horsepower. And early Lexus SC models were offered with a choice between an automatic or a manual transmission, although the manual was an uncommon choice and it went away. Now, if you wanted more power, you could upgrade to the Lexus SC400, which, as its name suggests, has a 4-liter V8 that started at around 250 horsepower, then went up to 260 and later 290. It was a big power engine. That one... was automatic only, and all SC models were rear-wheel drive. That was the standard of a nice luxury coupe in its era. Now, Lexus was a huge deal for Toyota. They spent an enormous amount of money to make sure this launch of this brand was a sensation, and the cars were We're radically over-engineered and... Quite impressive, and that included the original Lexus SC. Let's talk through some of its amazing features. You start by getting in with keyless entry, this remote, which not all luxury cars had back in the mid-90s. Amazingly, it still works. You press unlock, you open the door, and you see a nice piece of engineering. A big coupe with four seats has to have a big door in order to allow front and rear passengers to get inside. The drawback is a big door opens wide, and you can't get in. of a car in tight parking spaces, so Lexus figured out an interesting solution. The door not only opens out, but also forward, which kind of pivots the door a little bit to allow for a large enough opening without just opening straight out so you hit the car next to you. It's a neat idea, and you can see an enormous amount of hardware in the door hinge keeping the door in place and moving in the direction they wanted it to so it wouldn't sag or change course, obviously heavily over. Over-engineered, that's very clear, but kind of a cool idea for getting in and out of the car so you don't smash your door into the car next to you, a common big coupe problem. Anyway, you get inside the car, you tap your key on the ignition lock, and there's a magnet, a sensor, and the key in the ignition that the moment you do that, the steering wheel would automatically whir into a memory set position that you had chosen. You see, when you got out of the car the last time, the steering wheel would automatically rise up to give you more room to get out. So when you get back in the next time, the steering wheel automatically goes down to position that you had previously set. This was a radical, crazy luxury idea back in the early 90s. Also cool was the gauge cluster in this car, which is in this sort of dark gauge binnacle, but when you turn on the car, it is... And that's regardless of whether you have your headlights on or not. It was always backlit. Not only did it look cool, but the backlighting was consistent. You didn't have like a bulb in one place, and so there were some areas where it was dimmer on the sides. It just looked great all the time, which was a neat feature. And another neat feature in this car, automatic headlights. You can see there's an auto position for the headlights on the signal stalk. Very uncommon to have in the mid-1990s, But this car was in. intended to be the standard of the world and so it had it. This car also has a CD player. You can see the CD button on the stereo in the center and not just a CD player, but this car has a 12 disc. CD changer, which would have been a big baller thing to have back in 1997. Most cars didn't even have a player yet. How do I know it has a 12-disc CD changer? Well, that's because I have right here the original window sticker for this car. That 12-disc CD changer was $1,050 extra. Interestingly, the leather trim package also included some other stuff like electrochromatic Black outside mirrors. In other words, mirrors that would auto-dim on the outside of the car, another pretty big feature for 1997, proven by the fact that that option was $2,050 extra. Add all this stuff together, from a base price of $39,999, you get to a total sticker price for this car of $44,717 back in 1997 at Lexus of Saratoga. Now, beyond the nice luxury features in this car, there are also some rather interesting and unusual quirks like, for example, the gear lever, which I have always found bizarre in the Lexus SC. The way you were supposed to do it was you would wrap your whole hand around the gear lever and put your thumb on the top and then shift into gear, almost like, I guess, some sort of airplane control. They wanted to be sporty, and that was a way to do it even with an automatic transmission. Certainly an interesting gear lever. I actually love it. It's really cool. And that's how it worked in the automatic Lexus SC. Another interesting feature is this cup holder, which you can see is just a vertical. ...panel that's in place, but you pull on it and then it drops down and a cupholder pops out automatically and it can hold your drinks. Cupholders were clearly kind of an afterthought in this car, something they only realized they needed later, because the second one is right here in the middle, this panel that says push. You push to open, it opens up, but the cupholder is small and shallow. You wouldn't really trust that with your cups, and the vertical one isn't exactly much better. It hasn't. Another interesting thing about this car is its glove box. You look on the glove box and you see no immediately apparent latch. I don't think they wanted to stick that in there and ruin the look of the leather on the dashboard. So instead, the glove box opener is this button here next to the center climate vents, and you can lock the glove box with this. Key lock right above it. You can see the glove box is also a little bit higher up than you'd expect in most other cars. That's just how they designed this one. And another interesting quirk in this interior, over on the left side of the steering wheel, sort of getting into the footwell, you have the latches to open up the trunk and the fuel door. That's not that unusual. But in the middle of them, there's a key lock. And this is how you could lock out people from opening up your trunk and fuel door. With the master key to the car, You would turn this lock and then And then you give a friend or a valet the valet key and it wouldn't turn this lock and so they couldn't steal your fuel or get into your trunk. It was an interesting idea. But beyond the quirks and the nice features, the thing that I am most impressed by with this interior is just how nicely put together everything is. Everything in here still works. I get in so many 30-year-old cars where the dash is cracked, the wood is cracked. Plastics are brittle. Clips have broken. Not in here. The ashtray cover still opens just like it's supposed to. The cup holder, the parking brake, the center console lid isn't loose from years of people leaning on it. Everything in here works, which is a testament to Lexus build quality, the way they put this car together. It's all really impressive, especially getting inside 30 years and 117,000 miles after it was new. More on all that when I drive the car, I'm going to get into a little bit more. more about how it's all held together. Next, we move on to the back seats. You fold up the front seat and you can see the back seats, which frankly are not particularly unusual. Only two back seats in this car, two individual bucket seats, no center seat. If you really wanted to put rear seat passengers in a car, you would have bought the LS, the luxury sedan with four doors. These back seats are more for Temporary assignment and they're pretty snug bucket seats. They look kind of cool, but it's a no-frills experience back there. Not particularly luxurious, no roll-down windows, no climate vents, no speakers or cup holders. They're just seats for occasional use. And next, we move on to the trunk. Now, before we get into the trunk, I want to talk about badging. You can see the gold Lexus badges. This was a popular dealer-installed accessory on Toyota and Lexus models. Dealers a way to make a little more money. They would either gold plate the existing badges or trade them out for gold badges and then it made it feel like a more premium experience. This car has it. The gold Lexus badge. But anyway, next up, you get into the trunk. Now the trunk struts have failed, so I have to hold it up with this trusty stick. That's the one thing that hasn't lasted the life of this car. But you get into the trunk and it's a reasonably large trunk. Not exactly huge, but big enough. It's pretty much what you'd expect in a car like this. Nothing notable in the trunk except for you can see the carpeting. That was an option. The trunk carpeting cost $112 extra, and it classes up the trunk, if I do say so myself. And next, we got to talk about the overall design, the look of this car. Now, when Lexus was launching its brand, they had to be very careful with their vehicle designs because it was a totally new thing, a Japanese luxury brand to compete with the top echelon of German luxury cars. Lexus couldn't take a design risk and potentially alienate customers who thought it was weird. So the LS and the ES were very conservative. Lexus didn't want to risk having some problem with the way the cars looked, but the SC was different. It was the sporty one, the emotional passion car. It gave Lexus the opportunity to try something new and fun with the design, but they didn't. It's still a pretty basic, staid, stoic-looking car. Even though it's the sporty one, they were really worried that people would be turned off if they tried anything crazy or quirky or weird. And so, it looks like a fairly basic and simple car. There was some criticism in the front end of the headlights. They're sort of split into two, and these extra lights are in the middle. It was kind of odd, but mostly people just sort of accepted this car. There wasn't much to hate. And there wasn't really much to love. It was another conservative Lexus design. The SC was popular. It was sold from 1992 to 2000, and it was a big hit in that luxury coupe segment. It had a lot of fans, a lot of sales, and a lot of excitement, until it didn't. You might be wondering, What happened? The Lexus ES, one of their launch models, is still around and still popular. The Lexus LS, the other launch model, is still around and still popular. But the SC is long gone. And obviously, that's because of the decline of the large luxury coupe in general. In the late 1990s, consumer tastes started to shift. Luxury coupes weren't cool anymore. SUVs were cool, and this car, the tail end of its production run, kind of saw that decline starting to come. The Lexus SC was redesigned once. There was a second-generation model that was only offered with a V8 and a retractable convertible hardtop. There was no coupe version, and that lasted until about 2010, but then it was killed completely, never to return. Now, Lexus does have a luxury coupe in its lineup again today, But it's a lot more performance focused, and frankly, it's still a niche product compared to the SUVs that became so popular. In fact, this is a 97 SC300, and 97 was also the first year of Lexus's first SUV. So this car sitting on the showroom floor probably got to see the vehicle that would eventually cause its demise. That was the original Lexus LX, which was a big bruiser luxury SUV. But by 99, they had the RX, which was much more common for families, more affordable. And then the SUV craze started to take off. And it left cars like the SC completely in the dust. Which is a shame because, well, the driving experience is pretty impressive. Let's get it out on the road. The whole ride, driving the original Lexus SC300, and I gotta say, spend some time in this car and it is very clear to see why Lexus succeeded in its early days. I am astonished at the condition and quality of this car. Everything works in here, and it works just like it's supposed to, which is absolutely astonishing to me. The pull-out cup holder, in BMWs and old Saabs, it's like a meme that the cup holders break. In this car, it works perfectly. The power mirrors, the power button for the steering wheel column tilter, the... None of the buttons are rattling or loose or broken or even the numbers or letters are worn off of them. The ashtrays open, the cup holders open, none of the little plastic clips that keep them closed have failed over all the years. This is a testament to how the owner of this car has kept it and it's been with one owner since new, but it's also an unbelievable testament to Lexus quality. I cannot tell you how many times I get into a 30-year-old car with 113,000 miles and You know, wood trim is chipping or cracked, a common Mercedes problem. The plastic dashboard has cracked down the middle, a common problem in a lot of Asian cars. You know, with sun exposure, the glove box lid is loose and rattling and not functioning properly. This car has none of these issues. Lexus just made a damn good product. And people are going to say, well, yeah, that's how Toyota does it. I got to tell you, the... Equipment in this car, the parts do not have a 30-plus year service life. That was not their thinking when they designed it, but they designed good stuff that has just worked fantastically. And it's amazing. And the thing that really surprises me, I reviewed an LS 400 about five years ago for a video. And that car is sort of vaunted in automotive history. Everybody knows the LS 400 and its significance and how it broke in and really put the Japanese on the map against the German luxury brands. But nobody talks about this car. I was expecting the LS 400 to be a high quality state after all this time. But this SC is rarely mentioned. However. It has a lot of the same fantastic characteristics of the LS400 in terms of its build quality. And I have to say, it's not just that. It's like it feels comfortable. It feels nice. It feels luxurious in this car in a way that I just wasn't expecting. Honestly, I kind of assumed that the LS400 was the pinnacle. They put all their resources into that car, and the SC and the ES were sort of average. My family owned an original ES250, and it was sort of average, but not this car. This car, It has the feel of the LS, and this was supposed to take on cars like the BMW 8 Series and the Mercedes CL or the S-Class Coupe, and you can kind of see how it could have done that. Now, another thing that I'm surprised by is the eagerness of this powertrain. This is the base model engine, so there was the 3-liter and the V8, and this is the automatic, not the manual, and it still feels eager and strong and muscular and forceful and fast, like really actually fast. I can imagine the V8 must have felt better. It doesn't feel like crazy, oh my gosh. Get your hat on, your head's going to go back, but it feels fast, especially for a car from the early to mid-90s. Now, I will say there are some drawbacks that are worth noting with this car. The suspension is a little bit harsh, and yet the handling is not all that good. In the early 90s, they tried, they tried their best, but at the end of the day, the steering is radically over-assisted and over-boosted. The car has a fairly reasonably large amount of body Um steering precision is not something that they were really thinking about all that all that strongly back in the day and you can feel that there's a lot of play especially on center. Also huge kudos to the automatic transmission it's not the fastest none of these old torque converter autos were but it's smooth you accelerate it it still downshifts quickly and smoothly. It feels great also after all this time. This is just a sportier, kind of better-looking LS. Not quite the same in terms of luxury, but in terms of quality and materials, this car was Lexus through and through. And it really kept the same mantra that the LS was, sort of build the world standard. This car feels like that. And getting in this car after all these years, it is astonishing to me just how well it is held up and how well it was built. And so that's... The 1997 Lexus SC300, a great example of an old-school sport coupe from a time when Lexus was different. This is certainly a throwback to a different era of the luxury car, and you can buy this SC300 on Cars and Bids. Anyway, now it's time to give this car a Doug score. And the Doug score is here, 46 out of 100, which puts the SC300 here against some similar cars. It beats out basically all of its real rivals, like the Cadillac Eldorado and Acura Legend, which makes sense. The SC300 was just a better car, with better engineering, a great platform, and a nice smooth powertrain. But it's not a sports car, and so the Porsche 944 and Mk4 Toyota Supra Turbo win overall. Still, I was impressed with the SC300. It's smooth, Comfortable and surprisingly quick. And legendary Lexus build quality means it's held up wonderfully.