The Limited-Edition Lexus LC500 Inspiration: Unapologetically Impractical and Utterly Pleasurable

“You’ll want to take your wife for a drive in this one,” said the guy as he was dropping off the Lexus LC500 Inspiration, a limited-edition luxury convertible. Never mind the fact that my wife would rather operate such a vehicle than ride in one; the LC500 is still definitely a bicycle built for two. Technically, it has a backseat but using it only makes sense if you’re carting around a whippet or an iPad in its case. This isn’t a car for extra passengers. It exists purely for couples’ pleasure and leisure.

The LC500 is what they call an “emotional car,” and my primary emotion was “please don’t take it away from me at the end of the week.” Lexus is ceasing production of the vehicle, which they’ve been making for a decade, in August. It’s hard to compete when you’re in a class with vehicles like the BMW 8 Series, the Mercedes E-Class, the Porsche 911, the Aston Martin Vantage or even the Mazda Miata, which is kind of a downscale version of what the LC500 has to offer.

The Inspiration part of the vehicle is an add-on luxury package. Lexus only makes 550 of them a year, like a special-label whiskey: 200 coupes and 350 convertibles. The package costs nearly $11,000 on top of the base price of $107,750. With other add-ons and fees, the price for the model I drove topped $120,000. The package included a special off-white exterior color called “Wind,” dark chrome trim, beautiful tan and white interior leather accents, a premium Mark Levinson audio system, a heated steering wheel and driving improvements like a performance damper and a limited-slip differential, which improve the car’s handling, stability and traction.

The car gives the impression of cruising in a luxury speedboat. The LC500 is not a tooth-rattler like the 911 or a Stingray. You want to take it for a jaunt on a country road, not for a rip around the track. But it has the capability. The naturally aspirated V8 engine generates 471 horsepower and nearly 400 pound-feet of torque. In an age of silent driverless taxis, it emits a massive roar when you start it up or when you click it into gear on the highway. It is gloriously, unapologetically noisy.

We should probably talk about the coolness of driving a modern convertible, a rapidly vanishing breed of car. They’re not good for kids and they’re pretty dangerous to drive on modern highways with all those rocks and ladders flying around. But gone are the days when you had to manually crank the ragtop or when the automatic mechanisms felt clunky or took forever. With the press of a concealed lever in the center console, this car cranks away the roof almost like magic, as though Optimus Prime were putting out a call to the Autobots. It didn’t transform into Bumblebee; it stopped with the roof coming down. But maybe there’s a button for that as well.

The LC500 gets a combined 18 MPG, which, in this newfound American age of not caring about gas mileage, doesn’t make it unique. But it’s small and it’s boutique—two traits becoming increasingly rare as the Toyota family of cars moves away from any pretense of sports motif to lean into its core mission of hybridity, modest comfort and convenience. By getting rid of this model, they’re leaving some fun behind.

At the end of the week, they took the LC500 away and I definitely felt myself in a glass case of emotion. It left me with my daily driver, which is also part of a limited edition of 550 made by the Toyota family. Sure, it’s a 2013 Scion xB, but I did win it in a poker game. As anyone who’s lucky enough to buy one of the last of Lexus’s Inspiration series LCs knows, having one of just a few hundred of something is a good feeling. It makes you want to take your wife for a drive.

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