2007 Lexus Es350 on 2040-cars

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Watch an Aventador, Viper and LFA play the songs of their people

Our friends at Road & Track recently stopped by Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California, with the 2013 SRT Viper and found themselves a place to park between a Lamborghini Aventador and a Lexus LFA. Those machines might as well be the three musketeers of ludicrous exhaust notes, and rather than keep those 24 raging cylinders muffled, R&T set about conducting an orchestra of internal combustion. On seeing these three lined up, we were more than prepared to call the Viper victorious when it came to tickling our ear drums, but the latest domestic V10 sounds down right civilized in this company.
If we're picking favorites, we have to say the LFA takes the cake. There's something about the noise of a street-legal V10 that can wrap it's tachometer all the way to 9,000 rpm that turns our knees to quivering dollops of jelly. Check out the clip below for a listen. We shouldn't need to tell you to get frisky with the volume.

Toyota and Lexus show off advanced safety research vehicle [w/video]

While Google and Audi explore the possibilities of autonomous vehicles, Toyota and its Lexus division are studying the intermediate step of vehicles equipped with a deep suite of technology that help drivers make the best decisions. Introduced at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Lexus advanced safety research vehicle is an LS sedan fitted with three high-def color cameras to detect objects up to almost 500 feet away, 360-degree Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) lasers that can detect objects up to 220 feet away, three radar units to keep track of other vehicles at intersections, a precision odometer on the rear wheel, GPS that estimates orientation and an accelerometer.
Currently testing at a purpose-built 8.6 acre urban testing ground at the Higashi-Fuji Technical Center in Susono, Japan the Toyota research vehicle is being used to study how to make better drivers, as well as figuring out how to reduce crashes as the industry's journey through passive and active safety systems progresses. In the event of a crash, new rescue systems are also being tested.
Further investment is being put into the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) that would use shortwave signals to harness information from the car and from other vehicles on the road, as well as roadside infrastructure and even pedestrians. Toyota reasons it could then build a picture of interactions and, for instance, alert the driver to a potential collision at a blind intersection.

Lexus RC F glows with your heartbeat

It's not uncommon to see all manner of sensors being installed inside new cars these days, monitoring everything from ambient noise to our levels of alertness. The question is what the automakers will do with the information gathered by those sensors, and we've seen some fairly novel innovations. This latest solution from Lexus may not be the most useful, but it's definitely one of the most interesting we've seen to date. The Japanese luxury automaker's Australian division cooked up this special RC F show car with a heart-rate monitor and a special electroluminescent paint job. The sensors detect how fast the driver's heart is beating, and displays it accordingly down the side of the car's flanks. In daylight it looks like it's painted plain old ordinary silver, and otherwise it's the same luxury muscle coupe we know, with a 5.0-liter V8 churning out 467 horsepower in resolute defiance of the downsizing/turbocharging trend that's sweeping the industry. The project was cooked up by creative agency M&C Saatchi and uses glow-in-the-dark paint from American specialist Lumilor. The vehicle is set to be unveiled over the weekend, but you can scope it out now in the images below and the preview video above. Is it pointless? Almost entirely. Does that make it any less cool? Of course not. 22 July 2015 LEXUS GETS PULSES RACING WITH WORLD'S FIRST HEARTBEAT CAR Lexus Australia has developed the world's first vehicle to display a heartbeat on its exterior in a demonstration of advanced technology and the connection between man and machine. The Japanese luxury marque collaborated with creative agency M&C Saatchi to produce a one-off RC F V8 coupe that integrates a series of technologies to display a person's heartbeat in the vehicle's bodywork. The first stage of the system works by transmitting the heartbeat of a connected person from a heart rate monitor to a bespoke electrical system in the RC F. The on-board system captures and processes the data before sending an electric charge through the RC F's body panels that are painted in electroluminescent paint developed by US-based specialist Lumilor. This innovative paint finish glows when the electrical charge runs through it and displays the person's heartbeat via a real-time animation sequence. Lexus Australia chief executive Sean Hanley said the heartbeat car comes in the wake of other innovative brand activities in 2015 and an ongoing commitment to the development of high performance Lexus F vehicles.