Two thousand, or thereabouts. That’s how many of these pharmaceutically enhanced, dripping-with-brakes Lexus GS Fs the company will import into North America this year, the brand’s makers say. That’s about the same number of 488 GTBs that Ferrari will send stateside, or Lamborghini its Huracan. This finely feathered Lexus is one rare bird.
The notion of exclusivity in automobiles is fascinating because of its unique dialogue with territory. Join me now in the near future, when a man—sadly, inevitably, a man—buys one of these. It is a slung, glassine bolt of car, with a furious LED gaze, or it could just have a migraine. In any event, aggressive. The GS F is powered by a stormy-sounding 467-hp V8, its fenders resplendent with wheels, the inside wrapped in high-tech bondage upholstery and TAG Heuer-style instrumentality.
And our guy goes all in, ordering the car in Molten Pearl, a throbbing, lifeboat orange. He also opts for the orange brake calipers, around the ventilated steel, 15-inch pizza pans. These University-of-Miami-themed monobloc calipers, and the Mark Levinson sound system, are among the few options. Since this person is going to hell anyway, why not?
By now our Lexus-buying hero has transferred or promised to transfer $85,390 of his money to Toyota’s bank account. He has a reasonable expectation that the ownership and display of this car, this socially totemic item, will confer hierarchical status. As opposed to more civilized times when men simply wore codpieces.
But you see his problem. Those 2,000 cars are not evenly distributed in these United States. Indeed, most of them will live within 200 miles of one another, in Southern California, Silicon Valley, the Tri-State area and South Florida.
Irvine, Calif.: It’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday, at any one of the dozens of Starbucks-per-mile. Our man, fresh from the carwash, pulls in, only to see another blaze orange GS F, pulling out. He laughs, he smiles, he gives a thumbs up. In his mind his car is already on Craigslist.
Another orange GS F, in Orange County, Calif. (or Coral Gables, or any other orange-themed place). What are the odds? Pretty good, it turns out.