The luxury sedan built with the world's strongest stamping press
In short: To achieve the perfect silhouette for the fourth-generation Lexus LS, engineers utilized a 5200-ton press—the most powerful of its kind in the world. This industrial might was paired with artisanal touches like hand-polished crystal-like headlamps and wood veneer laminated by piano craftsmen.
The development of the XF40 generation Lexus LS began around 2001, marking a shift toward a global design strategy under the 'L-finesse' philosophy. This aesthetic prioritized body forms that ran the length of the car, featuring arrow-shaped chrome trim and fastback rear decks. To balance beauty with physics, engineers reduced the forward and aft coefficients of lift to 0.02 and 0.01 respectively, while maintaining a drag coefficient of 0.26.
Manufacturing the XF40 involved extreme industrial scale and meticulous handcraft. The fenders were produced using a massive 5200-ton stamping press. For the exterior finish, body panels were prepared by six-axis buffing robots before undergoing two rounds of manual wet-sanding between paint layers. Inside, the luxury was tactile: leather was buffed for three hours to achieve a specific smoothness, and wood trim was laminated to aluminum by Yamaha's piano craftsmen.
Safety and technology also saw significant leaps during this era. To mitigate whiplash, the XF40 debuted an automotive first: a safety mechanism capable of shifting smart headrests forward by 60 mm and upwards by 25 mm during rear impacts. It also debuted a Driver Monitoring System on the LS 600h L, which used a CCD camera and infrared detectors to track driver eye movements for attentiveness.
The lineage of this flagship traces back to the clandestine 'Circle-F' project initiated by Toyota in 1983. That initiative required six years of R&D, involving over 2,000 personnel and an expenditure exceeding US$1 billion to create a world-class luxury sedan. The XF40 eventually served as the brand's flagship from its 2006 debut until it was replaced in late 2017.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Lexus LS (XF40)
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