Finally, A Circular Lexus Like Everyone Wants

There’s been a proper dearth of official automotive freakiness recently. Sure, every other concept car seems to have an interior that looks like the inside of a gaming PC, but that’s not weird, that’s more sad than anything. No, I’m talking about stuff like the Renault Zoom’s press shoot with models clad in all-silver jumpsuits, at least half of Rinspeed’s back catalog, Jaguar hiding the XJ220’s powertrain in a Ford Transit van. Thankfully, Lexus has stepped up to the plate. It hired MSCHF to create two art cars and, oh my God, are they ever magnificently bizarre.

In case you aren’t familiar with MSCHF, this Brooklyn-based art collective is—to use a technical term—wonderfully batshit. Over the years, they’ve put real human blood in a pair of Nike Air Max 97s, built a rubber chicken that was also a usable bong, crafted sandals out of Birkin bags, and ran an experiment to see if human guilt could save a cow. The cow’s name was Angus, MSCHF sold shares of Angus, and Angus would be turned into burgers and handbags roughly two years after the shares went on sale unless 50 percent of tokens were returned. Spoiler alert: Angus lived.

As such, don’t expect to hand MSCHF a car or two and get merely restyled cars back. That just wouldn’t be the group’s style; it’s not nearly outrageous enough. A concept car from MSCHF doesn’t have to function as a car, it just needs to send a message. Be provocative. Get the people going. With that in mind, here’s the Circle Car.

At one point in time, this was a Lexus RZ 450e, an electric crossover that initially succeeded more at being a Lexus than at being a competitive electric car. A major update certainly helped the model evolve, but propulsion’s irrelevant because MSCHF has found a way to make this thing impossible to align. What seems to have happened here is that the RZ 450e was cut in half, then rebuilt in a circular arrangement, with everything between the axles stretched like taffy.

My favorite detail here, other than the work’s freestanding nature, is the door handle. It’s like three times the length of a normal door handle. It’s so excessive, I’m getting flashbacks to the time Bam Margera painted everything in Phil and April’s kitchen blue including the damn bananas. Like yeah, sure, why not? Who doesn’t like a bit of “yes, and”-ing?

The Circle Car’s pretty fucking wild. It can almost completely surround a mini-roundabout, confound onlookers, and … that’s pretty much all it needs to do, actually. However, it didn’t come alone. Wanna see something that would scream in agony if it had lungs?

That’s right, MSCHF also built a helical RX. Rather literally called Twisted Car, this one’s somehow even harder to explain. It kind of looks like it got in a fight with a ginormous tap and die set. It also kind of looks like it swallowed a piece of rotini pasta the size of a water main. It also has ridiculous door handles that seem entirely non-functional, on-theme with the car itself. If that isn’t enough for you, the press release contains the line “The vehicles shown are special project vehicles modified with non-Lexus parts that may void warranty, negatively impact safety, and not be street legal.” No kidding.

This whole affair seems like an odd pairing for notoriously staid Lexus, proud supplier of sensible luxury crossovers for dentists from coast-to-coast. However, if you want to break free of a perhaps overly conservative brand image, hiring guys like MSCHF could be the move. Regardless, the two-sculpture collection is called MOTOMORPHOSIS, and it’s on display from Thursday through Saturday at Chelsea Industrial in New York. What happens from there is anyone’s guess, although I’d get some perverse enjoyment in seeing these things on auto show stands across the country.

Top graphic image: Lexus