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Lexus LF-LC approved for production

On the sidelines of a press drive for the 2014 Lexus IS, the company's vice president of marketing in the US told Ward's Auto that the honchos in Japan have approved the Lexus LF-LC concept for production. He wouldn't offer any other details on how the luxury coupe might be transformed into a vehicle for the buying masses, and that has led to a bag full of speculation.
The show car was hybrid-powered and rear-wheel drive, a beautifully executed stab by Toyota designers in Newport Beach at redefining Lexus, but even with the concept, the point was to keep it "within reach for premium buyers." The report says the odds are on limited production and higher pricing than Lexus' "mainstream products," and other sites have speculated on what kind of powertrain it might end up in showrooms with.
GT Channel posits that the LF-LC will be the inspiration for a coupe in the Lexus LS price bracket with a choice of either the 4.2-liter V8 or the hybrid powertrain from the LS 600h, further speculating it will be called LC 550 and cost more than $100,000. It then says that there would be another coupe created beneath that one to replace the SC 430. Lexus Enthusiast, however, calls those "warmed-over rumors" and says that the marque probably won't deviate from its engine-capacity-naming scheme - labeling a car with a 4.2-liter V8 an LC 550. Nor does it think Lexus will use the letters LC after the company has trademarked "RC" in the US and Australia.

This is what a Lexus RC-based 'four-door coupe' might look like

It feels like there is a secret law in Germany mandating that every domestic automaker there must offer at least one model with a four-door coupe bodystyle like the BMW Gran Coupes, Mercedes-Benz CLS and Audi A7. Several of the German brands even have the swoopy sedans in multiple sizes. So far, Lexus has stayed out of that fray, but maybe not for long, if a recently spotted test car makes it to market.
The brand is known to be testing a highly styled four-door coupe, roughly the size of the GS, under heavy camouflage. Little is known about the new model at the moment, but its existence makes sense. If it really wants to take the on Germans, Lexus is going to have to fight them toe-to-toe with competing models - especially with ones understood to have high margins.
Pictured above is a rendering from artist Theophilus Chin imagining a slightly smaller take on the genre based on the RC coupe, which he calls the RC GT. His design leaves the original shape almost untouched, but shortens the front doors to allow room for a rear doors under the arching roof. His GT would be aimed more against the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe and rumored Mercedes-Benz C-Class four-door coupe, rather than the larger models Lexus actually appears to be targeting with its vehicle under development. His concept certainly nails the look, though, and while it might not have a basis in reality, we thought that it's well-resolved enough that you'd want to take a look, if only as a "what could've been" flight of fancy.

Lexus still planning seven-seat crossover

In case you're thinking, "But Lexus already has a seven-seat crossover in the GX 460," that's actually a proper SUV - the body-on-frame kind with the massive footprint and floaty handling. A report in Automotive News says that Lexus is trying to figure out how to produce a true crossover with space for seven humans, with the options narrowed down to growing the RX (pictured) or sorting out a brand new model.
How badly does the brand want it? Its chief told AN that another row is first on the list of dealer requests, that the offering could be worth 35,000 more sales per year and they don't care if it eats into five-seater RX sales - "We want it." But hey, when 40 percent of monthly sales are made up of the RX, and Lexus moved more than 103,000 of them in 2013, it's understandable that the company wouldn't mind risking a small hit for the chance to increase sales by a third of their current levels.
Toyota applied to trademark the name TX and that's already been mooted in reports as a replacement for the GX, said to end its life in 2016. The latest report, however, suggests that the GX might not go away since it's "highly profitable for the automaker, even at low volumes," and that "TX coding could merely be for a seven-seat variant of the RX 350." AN also wonders if this larger hauler would stay on the recently lengthened Toyota Highlander platform, which offers meager third-row seating, or switch to the rear-wheel-drive platform used by the IS and GS for tauter responsiveness. With Lexus saying it will be at least two years before it could be brought to market, we have a while to wait yet to find out.