RESHAPING THE SUV
To call the LF-1 merely a departure for the traditionally conservative Lexus brand would be an emphatic minimization.
It’s a balmy December morning. I’m standing in an L.A. photo studio and bearing witness to the Lexus LF-1 concept. This is the first time anyone has seen the tangible, functional, completed evidence of Toyota’s styling team’s efforts since it returned from the specialty-car fabricators at Sivax.
For more than a year, the 11-member Calty team pored over sketches, renderings, scale models, paint samples, interior fabrics and materials, and a full-size clay model. Now, with their collective work effort starkly posed in front of them, the group is speaking in hushed, almost reverential tones.
Suddenly, in a fit of enthusiasm, Ian Cartabiano, Calty’s chief designer and the overseer of the exterior design of the LF-1, spontaneously grabs my shoulders and gives them a manly shake.
“It’s so hot. It’s so hot. Look how hot it is,” he exclaims. He is quite literally hopping up and down, unable to contain his elation.
The normally composed Cartabiano is justifiably adrenalized. To call the LF-1 merely a departure for the traditionally conservative Lexus brand would be an emphatic minimization. The look of the LF-1 is more athletic and dramatic than the current LS and LC but has none of the gratuitous wackiness of RX and NX. The bold styling represents Lexus’ new design direction—which the automaker describes as “brave, courageous, provocative, and imaginative.”
