No More Boring Cars

Said the big boss Akio Toyoda and the transformation, the radicalisation, the absolute banishment of watch-the-paint-dry dullness has a new poster boy in the LC500h

- Sirish Chandran

THE LC 500H HAS A TEN SPEED GEARBOX. And I spent an entire dinner with the LC’s chief engineer, over an orgasm of flavours crafted by a Michelin-starred purveyor of food porn, attempting to understand how a gearbox can be both a CVT as well as a torque converter. It is, what you’d call, peak Japan — a culture that celebrates an obsession with perfection that borders on the clinically OCD. The boss said no boring cars so our designers will curve and slash every single panel; our testers will spend their days thrashing round the Nurburgring; and our engineers will cause indigestion in anybody attempting to understand the workings of the drivetrain. A good thing, then, that the dinner stretches to ten courses. We need the time to understand why. Why not just a regular 10-speed? Why not a twin-clutch? Why is there no beef on the menu?