Lexus’ high-performance sub-brand, F, is 10 years old in 2018. To mark this, the firm has taken one of the 500 LFA supercars and given it to Portuguese artist Pedro Henriques for him to create the firm’s first art car.
The result? A unique LFA wearing a black and white design that Henriques says “expresses a sense of movement and evolution”.
In everyday life, he said, things are fluid, in constant motion. “It is hard to freeze anything.
“The lines follow this sense of going everywhere and never stopping… I wanted to reach an organic feeling by using hand-made material and liquid lines in the elements spread throughout the car.”
The car will debut this weekend at the 24 Hours of Spa Blancpain GT race: at the event, Lexus’ RC F GT3 is making its competitive debut.
Lexus will almost certainly show it at some of the design events it supports, too. It always exhibits at Milan Design Week and has also now opened a pop-up ‘UX Art Space’ in Lisbon.
There are works there from a number of artists – including Pedro Henriques.
The fact Lexus is linking its LFA art car with racing does have us thinking, though. BMW is the world’s most famous creator of art cars – and its first, the 1975 3.0 CSL created by Alexander Calder, was actually commissioned by Herve Poulain for him to race in that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
To date, BMW has worked with artists to create 17 art cars. Could Lexus be about to start its own series of art cars, we wonder?