Flickr user senti-mental1 spotted, of all things, a pink Lexus LS 400 in San Jose:

One thing’s for sure, the gold badging has never looked more appropriate.

Every once and a while, a classic Lexus LS 400 clip will show up on Youtube, showing the car up against its competitors, and it always amazes me just how throughly Lexus thought out their first model. Here we have a 1990 video clip from Top Gear, putting the LS 400 up against the Mercedes 420SE, Jaguar 4.0, and the BMW 735i:

To think that the Mercedes cost £4000 more than the LS 400, and didn’t even come with air conditioning or a radio (mind you, it was the long-wheelbase version). I’ve read that the luxury brands at the time were fairly complacent, but I had no idea of the extent.

It’s hard to discount the power of Youtube when you can watch a 1989 episode of Top Gear detailing the introduction of the then-newly released Lexus LS 400 (jump ahead to 1:26 to get there directly):

Not a full-on review, which is a slight disappointment, but the praise is astounding, let me quote presenter Tiff Needell:

“The power from the big 32-valve V8 engine comes on as smoothly as the Jaguar, which is saying something. The ride is certainly as good as the Mercedes 420, and the handling on these winding mountain roads is at least the equivalent of a BMW.”

I imagine, when comparing the handling to a BMW, he’s referring to the 7-series.

It’s always a blast seeing your favorite cars featured in TV and movies, and what what an appearance the Lexus LS 400 made in the first episode of the Sopranos (Warning: Contains coarse language and violence, viewer discretion advised):

I don’t even like my girlfriend driving my car, and she’s not in the habit of running people down. If you ask me, Christopher should have given Tony a pop in the jaw.

As an LS 400 owner, I always get a kick out of seeing the old commercials pop up on Youtube:

It’s interesting that Lexus has maintained a very distinctive look to their advertising over the years. Save for the grainy VHS look and the car featured, this commercial could easily appear on TV today. Now that’s quality advertising.

For any old-school LS 400 owners handy with a torque wrench and a willingness to get their hands dirty, there is no site better than Lexls.com:

This site is jampacked with a range of useful information, with everything from changing your oil to replacing your timing belt/water pump. Each tutorial is extremely well written and features photos of every step along the way.

This site gets my highest recommendation, it’s a labor of love for the author, and it shows on every page.

(Owning a first-gen LS, I’ve used the tutorials for a few small things, like cleaning the air filter, but because of time and space constraints, I leave most of the other stuff to my trusty mechanic.)

Someone must have been digging through their old VCR tapes, because here’s two VHS quality commercials from the LS 400’s inaugural advertising campaign:

Funny story about the first commercial, taken from the book Lexus: The Relentless Pursuit:

What the ad didn’t say — and what Team One [Lexus’ Advertising Agency] members didn’t know until later — was that gold-plated sensors are standard on almost every car. However, few in the viewing audience seemed to notice and it served its purpose by reinforcing the notion that Lexus was synonymous with quality of the highest standard.

One of the major design considerations when the first LS 400 was being prototyped was reducing its drag co-efficent (Cd), or the amount of wind turbulence the car experienced when in motion. A low drag helps with fuel efficiency and reduces the amount of energy needed to keep the car moving, and when the car was introduced, the LS 400 proposed to have lowest Cd of any standard passenger car.

So when Autospeed decided to publish a series of articles examining the aerodynamics of various vehicles, including a 1991 Lexus LS 400 seemed elementary. They also took to an interesting method of investigation: tufts of wool were taped over the entire car, which was then driven down an empty highway at 80mph, all while these tufts were examined for turbulence. Quite a bit cheaper than renting a windtunnel!

This was by no means an exact experiment, but the results are interesting nonetheless. They discovered a bit of air turbulence around the bottom of the rear window, though minimized by the design of the C pillars, and some additional unsteady air flow around the front wheel wells.

At the very least, this was quite an entertaining visualization technique of a key component in vehicle design.

Wheeler Dealers was a british TV show with a very simple premise: buy a beat-up classic, restore it, and sell it off for a profit.

In one episode, they tackle a first generation LS 400 (judging by the rims, a 91-92 model), purchased from some poor sod for £1300. Here’s the first part to whet your appetite:

Mike & Ed start off by fixing some of the standard first-gen LS 400 issues, like the front control arms and the blacked out temperature display, and taking the rear bumper in for a repaint.

They move on to modernizing the car, and some of the changes they made, like replacing the amber signal lights with clear lenses and converting the headlights to halogen lamps, really improve the look. However, they replace the stock rims with IS 300 wheels, which seem small in the wheel wells and ill-suited to the car. Still, they’re definitely a step up.

Definitely makes for some interesting viewing, and seeing how easy it is to replace those turn signals gives me some ideas of my own.

Click Read More to see the remainder of the episode — their resale value was disappointing, but I’m hardly in tune with the British car market.
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It doesn’t look much like a Lexus, but this restored 1955 Ford F-100 owes a great deal to the LS400. Owners Terry & Terri Altman used the ‘91 Lexus LS400 1UZFE engine, along with its steering column and instrumentation in their restoration.

As for why, here’s a quote from their interview with Custom Classic Trucks:

They remarked that it was the company’s slogan that made a huge impact on their decision to install something other than a Ford or Chevy V-8 under the hood.

“The Passionate Pursuit of Perfection” is what solidified the decision to install the ‘91 Lexus V-8. With its enormous wiring harness and several computers, it was a formidable mechanical challenge in itself. The slogan also describes the considerable effort Terry has invested in the construction of his beautiful black ‘55 F-100 in his attempt to make it modern but not radical.

The result of their hard work is an amazing meld of old & new, with the dependability of a Lexus engine & cachet of an exceptional classic truck. This was a very smart and unique approach to restoration, and is bound to be a vehicle that the Altmans can enjoy driving for years to come.