“Let’s talk about that 5.0-liter V8. Yaguchi didn’t want a turbo-charger to get power, because it lacked linearity. He laughed out loud when we asked if a V10 would fit. Yes, it would, he said, but it’s way too expensive and heavy. The engine he started with was the 4.6-liter V8 from the LS and the GS. Working with Yamaha, Yaguchi’s team stroked it a quarter-inch to get the displacement up to 5.0 liters. Adding the stroke made it less undersquare, giving it inherently better low-end torque. Improve-ments to the heads by Yamaha gave it high-end horsepower. It now produces 416 hp and more than 371 lb-ft of torque, numbers that make the old IS engine look like a weed whacker.”
" Aft of the V8 is what Lexus says is the world’s first eight-speed sport direct-shift transmission. It, too, starts life as the unit from the LS. In this application, the torque converter locks in second through eighth gears in manual mode for more efficiency. The paddle-shift manual mode holds each gear to the 6800-rpm redline. Upshifts take a tenth of a second, the fastest for a production transmission, Lexus says. Downshifts come with a blip of the throttle for smoothness.
The new car weighs 3780 pounds, only 250 more than the standard IS, so there is more than enough power to weight. Balance is 54/46 front/rear."
