Well we couldn’t quite believe our eyes when we heard the IS-​​F is already up for sale over in Japan, despite not being avail­able till Feb 2008 over in the States (and who knows when in Aus­tralia), and despite being rumored for release in Japan in December!

The Ultra Hot Lexus L-​​FA

Clas­si­cally Lexus evokes images of stately, extremely well appointed saloons and sedans aimed at a mar­ket with plenty of cash and years. Lexus seems to be chang­ing that by sav­agely rework­ing the IS250’s plat­form for, well, bru­tal speed.

The IS-​​F now runs a very impres­sive direct-​​injected quad cam 5.0L V8 pro­duc­ing a colos­sal 311kW or 417HP, with a very healthy 372 lb-​​ft of torque, all har­nessed with a claimed world first eight-​​speed direct sport shift trans­mis­sion. Enough to power the (supris­ingly heavy) 1693kg (3726 lb) sports sedan from 0–60 in about 4.9 seconds.

The car goes on sale in Japan at a price of around 7.66 mil­lion yen.

View more on our Squidoo Lens.

[Source: Wind­ing Road]

It’s four and a bit years away, but some sources believe the GS-​​F will carry the 500HP V10 slated for the LS-​​F con­cept, set­ting it squarely in the BMW M5’s path, and pos­si­bly the Audi RS6’s.

Details for the For­mula 1 inspired pow­er­plant aren’t set in stone and are vague at best, all we know is it’s a sub-​​five litre 500HP V10, and it will be dropped into the new 2011 GS body. The GS-F’s trans­mis­sion pre­dicted to be a paddle-​​shifting fully man­u­al­ized mod­i­fied 8 speed auto­matic, and styling is expected to fol­low along the IS-F’s body cues.

Hit MotorTrend for some ren­dered imagery.

The First Lexus Supercar?

It looks like Lexus will be enter­ing the super­car mar­ket with con­fir­ma­tion of it’s L-​​FA con­cept going ahead into pro­duc­tion, albeit in a some­what dif­fer­ent form to what we’ve seen around the world’s motor shows.

Carsales.com.au informs us the car will be given the des­ig­na­tion F for “Fuji speed­way” where Lexus would test their new mon­ster. The car is expected to be a front engined V10, pos­si­bly based on a sim­i­lar archi­tec­ture to Toyota’s F1 car engines, and put out 370kW (500hp), com­pet­ing directly with other big mean Euro­pean super­cars, such as the Mer­cedes SL65 AMG, Porsche 911 Turbo, Aston Mar­tin DB9 and Fer­rari F430. It will also be inter­est­ing to see how the new Lexus super­car stacks up against Nissan’s upcom­ing GTR.

(more pic­tures avail­able via Carsales.com.au)

The first F series Lexus, the IS-​​F is expected to arrive in Aus­tralia some­time next year. Aus­tralian IS-F’s will be fit­ted with a 5L 300kW V8 an 8 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion and lim­ited slip dif­fer­en­tial, mak­ing the car a nice drag pack­age for those of you with the incli­na­tion (all of you I dare say).

Dis­cuss this in the forums!