The Lexus RC Coupe has landed

It’s Japan's rival to the BMW 4-Series and Audi A5. It has a pointy face. And there’s a V8 version coming




This is Lexus’s answer to the BMW 4-Series coupe and Audi A5. This is the RC Coupe, due to be officially unveiled at the Tokyo show later this month. It looks pointy. It looks interesting.

The RC Coupe is, in essence, the new two-door Lexus IS. But, just as BMW upgraded its 3-Series coupe to 4-Series, so Lexus too has decided its IS coupe, with its bold new face, needs a bold new name

The RC Coupe takes styling cues from the lovely LF-LC concept, and gets Lexus’s new Predator-spec ‘spindle grille’ atop a mouth large enough to swallow pedestrians.

Does it have the power to match its visual, erm, grrrr? Well, though Brit-spec engines are yet to be announced, we know the RC will be unveiled in two petrol-gargling guises: the 179bhp RC300h hybrid, which mates a 2.5-litre four-cylinder to Lexus’s leccy motor tech, and the more powerful RC350, with a 3.5-litre V6 driving the rear wheels.

Lexus hasn’t revealed any performance figures, but we’d expect the RC350 to make around 300bhp, which should be good for a 0-62mph time somewhere in the six-second region, if not a little quicker.

At some point down the line, we’ll see the BMW M4-rivalling RC-F, expected to pack a naturally-aspirated 4.5-litre V8 making some 450bhp, along with even more aggressive styling.

What else do we know? That the RC Coupe is just a couple of centimetres bigger in every direction than the 4-Series coupe. That you can’t have it with any wheels smaller than 18s. And that it benefits from ‘a new Lexus painting process’ that apparently produces paint more, um, painty than normal paint.

We’ll find out more at Tokyo, before the RC reaches the UK next year. Would you take one over that annoyingly excellent 4-Series?