The Lexus LC 500 is hands-down one of the absolute best new cars on sale today. It’s the last great naturally aspirated V8 grand tourer, a scintillating blend of howl and leather striking an out-of-this-world pose. A difficult thing to improve on, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. The latest notable attempt? One Japanese tuner has decided to effectively ditch the car’s spindle grille.
Ever since the 2011 Lexus LF-Gh concept car, the brand’s Predator-aping face has attracted scores of haters, with some valid complaints and some that are a bit out there. The treatment on the 2013-ish LX 570 looked like a half-hearted afterthought, but the LC 500 grand tourer has the most cohesive spindle grille we’ve seen yet. Still, that hasn’t stopped people from whinging about it, presumably the same sorts of people who earnestly enjoy a bowl of grits.
You want to know what an LC 500 would look like without its spindle grille? Well, you no longer have to imagine. This year’s Tokyo Auto Salon—think Japan’s SEMA show—was full of weird cars, and the Lexus LC Tom’s Edition is easily one of the strangest. On paper, there’s nothing strange about an iconic Toyota tuner reworking Lexus’ flagship, but you just need to look at this body kit.
Oh. Oh dear. That looks remarkably bland. Sure, there’s a little bit of LFA homage in the trapezoidal lower grille and triangular bumper trims, but the overall result is more reminiscent of an early CT 200h than a flagship supercar. It’s a rather anonymous down-the-road graphic simultaneously influenced by everything and nothing in particular, and even though this wide-angle shot is particularly unflattering, the situation doesn’t get much more visually exciting from other vantage points.
The rest of the LC 500 still looks tremendous, with clean surfacing, wide haunches, and that plunging hood line. Deleting the spindle grille results in a face that can’t quite match the boldness of the rest of the shape, and you’ll immediately see what I mean when you look at this photo of a regular LC 500 cabriolet.
Different color, similar angle, stock grille. Notice how everything just sort of resolves? The sweeping body line passes through the front arch, gets picked up by the daytime running light, and comes to a point at the skinniest part of the spindle grille. Likewise, the grille bezel continues the hood character lines without competition. Oh, and the simple vertical air curtain vents in the bumper don’t try to compete with the lighting bezels. Lexus just nailed it out of the gate with a car that still looks fresh.
In a way, this whole thing reminds me of those stick-on covers that hide a Y2K-era Porsche’s fried-egg headlights. It might be to someone’s tastes, but that doesn’t automatically make it superior in execution to standard. The surfacing and shut lines don’t quite look OEM, and the result is one that probably won’t age as gracefully as the original design.
On the plus side, it’s not like a body kit is the entire draw here. Tweaked suspension and powertrain modifications should make the Tom’s Edition LC 500 sharper and more emotive than the standard car. However, perhaps the move is to tick the boxes for the go-fast stuff without altering the cosmetics beyond the wider Tom’s Edition wheels.
Top graphic image: Tom’s
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Japanese tuner make a car look LESS wild.
You call it “bland”
I call it an improvement.
it’s better than the spindle shit lol
The spindle grill is polarizing, I get it, but it is more effective than this.
I’m not saying that this Tom’s bodykit is the best looking grille for this car but it is better than the stock spindle grill. I just don’t like the spindle.
I never cared for the spindle grille until I saw these in person. I can’t say it’s my favorite part of the design, but it doesn’t look contrived “well, uh, all the other shapes have been taken as brand trademarks” as it does on other models. The way the grille shape works with the other lines, yet bisects the strong horizontal one, leaving them unresolved as a way to add tension, works. It’s also helped considerably by the interior grille treatment that manages to make the car look premium, but if they really wanted to “fix” it, all they had to do was run a body-color strip to continue the horizontal character line across to join the narrows, not too unlike what Nissan has just done with the Z. The redesign of the rest of the front is brilliant in the way that I thought only Toyota’s own designers could manage—deftly blending bland with offensive. It’s exactly what I would expect the front bumper of a reimagined Solara to look like, the hideous 2nd gen whose design inspiration wall included pics of bloated corpses left out in the summer. I often wonder if its designer also made their own furniture upholstered in human skin.
It seems like the spindle was designed specifically for the LC. It works best on the car with the least vertical and gets progressively worse as you go from the sedans to the crossovers and then the godawful prior-gen GX and LX.
Does Tom’s look better? Yes.
Does it look more boring? Yes.
Do I prefer Tom’s? shrug emoji
Sorry but the spindle grill looks terrible and always has.
Yep. Still ugly no matter how many times I see it. Same with the GINORMOUS BMW grilles.
The LC is pretty much the only Lexus that suits the spindle grille too. It’s quite interesting how boring it looks without it.
Agreed, I was surprised the first time I stood next to an LC500 coupe, how well the spindle grille worked with the rest of the vehicle.
I like Tom’s better.
Bozos? What is this, the NY Post?
But I agree, and believe that screwing with the LC should be punishable by Rodius.
…is TOM’S the ones who stuck a snorkel on the SW20 MR2 or was that TRD?
In any case…yeah, I see what they were trying to go for but they just knocked at minimum $30,000 off the visual MSRP. It might help a bit if they went for a mesh or otherwise flush upper grille Ala early IS-F instead of t h e b l o b.
TOM’S the same company who had the snorkel on the MR2 and also, you know, the Castrol JGTC Supra as well as a bunch of famous race cars.
Yeah, was confusing the TOM’S T020 with the TRD 2000GT (which was the GT300 body kit for the MR2). They were both painted white in Gran Turismo 2, I think that’s why I was getting confused.