Lexus LFR Supercar Sounds Glorious At Goodwood

When Toyota announced its lineup for the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed at the end of June, it didn’t mention it would bring its new GT3 race car. The track-only machine made a surprise appearance earlier today by going up the famous hill. Better yet, it wasn’t alone. A second, camouflaged prototype also appeared, believed to be its road-going counterpart with a different badge.

The Lexus LFR has already been spotted at Fuji Speedway in Japan, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, the Nürburgring in Germany, and more recently near Pikes Peak in the United States, where it is being benchmarked against the previous-generation AMG GT. Now it’s in the UK, and we might see more of it before the Goodwood FoS ends on Sunday. It’s easy to tell the road car apart from its track-only sibling thanks to the latter’s far more aggressive aero, including a monstrous rear wing.

The cars sound positively glorious, fueling rumors of a brawny V-8 engine under that long hood. Most of the sweet noise comes from the race car, as the street-legal version won’t be nearly as loud due to emissions and noise regulations. The track car also features more aggressive cooling and appears to be wider. Other changes include lightweight side windows instead of traditional glass, side-exit exhausts, and a large front wiper positioned upright at the center of the windshield.

The road-going version won’t be a direct successor to the revered V-10-powered LFA. Instead, it’s expected to be more of an RC F replacement, albeit a significantly more exotic one. Toyota has been teasing its new supercar and race car duo for about three and a half years. Back in January 2022, it surprised everyone at the Tokyo Auto Salon with the unveiling of the GR GT3 concept. While the show car wore a Toyota badge, we’ve since learned from our sister site Motorsport.com that the road-legal version will carry a Lexus logo.

Toyota and Lexus remain tight-lipped about both cars, but reports suggest the V-8 will feature a pair of turbochargers and possibly a hybrid setup. With forced induction and perhaps some form of electrification baked in, the LFR is likely to outpunch the naturally aspirated LFA’s 553-hp output significantly. While we’ll miss the Yamaha-co-developed V-10 soundtrack, this new engine doesn’t sound half bad either.

There are still many missing pieces to the puzzle. Heck, we don’t even know if it’ll officially be called LFR. Toyota is expected to race the GR GT3 in Europe next year, so we might not have to wait much longer for the camo to drop. Hopefully, the Lexus-badged variant will follow shortly, or, ideally, be revealed ahead of the race car.