It may have its detractors but there’s no denying the Lexus LFA, especially in its Nürburgring Edition trim, is one of the best performing and most desired supercars ever produced.

Only 500 examples were built, with the very last car rolling off the production line at Toyota’s high-tech Motomachi plant in Japan last December.

While a direct successor isn’t planned, Lexus promises that the materials, knowledge and techniques used in the LFA’s creation will be utilized for the automaker’s future models.

More importantly, the spirit of the engineers, who had the single-minded goal of building the best driver’s car in the world, will live on as well.  

It was in 2000 that Lexus engineer Haruhiko Tanahashi first assembled a team of engineers and launched the LFA project. Originally conceived as an exercise in lightweight construction, the requirements of the LFA project changed numerous times during the car’s decade-long gestation and also came close to being canceled on a number of occasions.

Lexus’ perseverance paid off, with the LFA Nürburgring Edition completing a lap of the notorious Nürburgring-Nordschleife in just 7:14.64, and all 500 LFAs, despite being priced at a staggering $375,000, selling out within the car’s short production run. Both feats are impressive considering the LFA was never the most powerful, quickest shifting or quickest accelerating car for the money.

In case you’ve forgotten, the LFA came with it a 4.8-liter V-10 with a redline of 9,000 rpm and a peak output of  552 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque. Drive was sent to the rear wheels via a six-speed sequential gearbox and a Torsen limited-slip differential. Official performance estimates were a 0-60 mph time of 3.7 seconds and a top speed of 202 mph. The LFA Nürburgring Edition boosted output by 10 horsepower and cut the shift times of the gearbox to just 0.15 of a second.

We’d like to join Lexus in saluting its LFA and are glad that it helped lift the benchmark for the supercars of tomorrow. 

For our complete coverage on the Lexus LFA, click here.

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