Globe Drive

I have driven enough super cars – the Porsche GT, Damon Hill's 1997 F1 race car, the Mercedes McLaren SLR to name three – to have experienced this before: the tingling in my fingertips and toes, the effort required to breathe deeply rather than in short gulps and the quickened heartbeat of an eight-year-old on Christmas morning.

Men will be boys, of course, no matter how old they get. And so this is how it feels for me to anticipate going fast, really fast, in a rare and unusual car.

As we pull into Homestead Miami Speedway, a well-known oval and road course 45 minutes south of Miami, all these reactions and feelings cascade through me.

I'm here to test drive the long-anticipated 552-horsepower Lexus LFA. There are two here to be driven, two prototypes, one flown in from Europe, the other from Asia. If the production version of the LFA will sell for $375,000 (U.S.), these two are near priceless – they cannot be immediately replaced.

Eventually, the LFA will go on sale. You'll be able to order one, or at least try to, next summer, though Lexus types say they are happy to take “expressions of interest” now for a car that will not be delivered until January, 2011.

Even if you have $375,000 (U.S.) to throw at an LFA, you won't be able to buy one. To keep the LFA out of the hands of brokers and flippers, speculators and eBay sellers, Lexus plans to lease this street-legal racer, which goes from zero to 100 km/h in less than four seconds, for the first two years. After that, lessees will have the option to purchase.

Yet even if you're willing to go along with this rent-to-own plan, even if you have the money and the desire, you still might not get bragging rights to an LFA. Demand, you see, is sure to exceed supply.

Lexus plans to build just 500 cars over 24 months; the United States will get 150 and Canada 10. Exclusive? Absolutely.

Moreover, Lexus people say 500 is a hard number. Once production ends at the end of 2012, that's it – no more LFAs.

I have tossed all this detail out of my head for the moment, as I pull back on the right paddle shifter just behind the steering wheel, putting my white LFA into first gear. We're off down pit lane, and before I can blink I've hit 5,000 rpm (the redline is 9,000), so I snap the rear-mounted transaxle into second.

The gearbox is an automated sequential affair capable of being dialled into any one of four shift modes and seven shift speeds. I'm in Sport with its white readouts (there is also Normal, Wet and Auto), which means I have six ratios to leverage all that power and an up-shift from third to fourth under full throttle happens in 0.2 seconds.

Once out of the pits and into turn one of the 14 on the Homestead road course, the 4.8-litre, 72-degree compact V-10 is already howling. In the cockpit, behind the delicious chopped-on-the-bottom steering wheel (it looks cool and helps lower the car's overall centre of gravity), the noise envelopes me even though I am wearing a full-face helmet and head sock.

Though spine-tingling, the F1-like sounds quickly recede into background noise. Turn one arrives and I head left with a flick of the wheel aiming for the next apex. Turn two is a very sharp and tricky left-hander and it's important to hit it correctly to set up for turn three, which is an easy right heading into a short straightaway where I hit fourth gear before braking hard and down-shifting – “blip, blip” – with the pull of the left-side paddle before entering a 90-degree right-hander.

And this is it how it goes around the 2.21-mile course. Throttle on, snapping off shifts. Throttle off, hard braking and downshift – bang, bang – then as the car unwinds out of a turn, it's back on the throttle slingshot-like.

The car is blindingly fast, no question. Top speed, we're told, is 320 km/h and even way up there the LFA is designed to remain stable – a sealed underbody and a pop-up rear wing help mightily.

The engine, with its forged titanium connecting rods, forged aluminum pistons, lightweight titanium intake and exhaust valves and independent electronic throttle bodies, is a sensory and sporting triumph. It's also an impressive bit of engineering.

Located up front but aft of the front axle, the engine sits in a front-midship position that makes possible the 48/52 front/rear weight distribution. There, this V-10 screams like an F1 power plant at its most dangerous and delivers like nothing else Toyota has ever put into a production car.

Naturally, the car is a symphony of race car ideas and executions. Take the dry sump design for the oil system. It means there is no oil pan under the engine, allowing the latter to sit low and help lower the car's centre of gravity. The oil pumps are designed to provide lubrication at an astounding two Gs of lateral acceleration. If you can stand two Gs, you're ready to become an astronaut.

Other technical details: side air intakes scoop in air for the rear-mounted radiators and front air inlets channel cooling air for the transmission and brakes. The dual exhaust pipes are stacked vertically running the length of the car, along with a rigid torque tube that connects the rear tranny to the front engine. The structure for all this, of course, contributes to the car's rigid structure.

The lightweight carbon fibre body is critical here. In fact, 65 per cent of the car's construction is carbon fibre, which is far stronger than the strongest steel. On the track, the 1,590-kg LFA feels like one solid block of speed.

Meanwhile, the multilink independent suspension design, supported by cast aluminum subframes, manages cornering forces, keeping the car flat and controlled – no roll, no acceleration squat, no brake dive. The electric power rack-and-pinion steering is as sharp as you'd expect.

And then there are the brakes – carbon ceramic discs, 15 inches, are 40 per cent the weight of iron ones and they don't seem to ever get hot and fade. The calipers – a six-piston type up front, four-piston in the rear – are mounted toward the centre of the vehicle, again to help with weight distribution. BBS forged alloy wheels wear new-generation Bridgestone Potenzas (265/35R 20 up front, 305/30R 20 in the rear).

It's quite the car. But then it should be. Toyota has been studying and working on the LFA since at least early 2000, and development has proceeded carefully and cautiously. Toyota has shown various concepts over the years and a race-car version competed last year at the Nurburgring 24 hours. Finally, we had the world premiere of the production car last week at the Tokyo motor show.

So the LFA is a true supercar and, delightful as it is, we very likely will never see anything quite like it from Lexus and Toyota again. The development costs are too high and the profits too slim, no matter how great the boost the car gives the Lexus brand.

This is the way it is with supercars, and it's why I rarely get to drive any of them more than once. Fortunately, there always is another manufacturer willing to step up every couple of years to rekindle the excitement.

*****

2011 LEXUS LFA

Type: Super-high-performance coupe

Price: $375,000 (U.S.)

Engine: 4.8-litre V-10, DOHC

Horsepower/torque: 552 hp/354 lb-ft

Transmission: Six-speed automated sequential gearbox (ASG)

Fuel economy (litres/100 km): NA

Alternatives: Lamborghini Gallardo and Murcielago LP 640, Porsche GT2, Ferrari F458 and 599 GTB Fiorano, Aston Martin DBS, Mercedes McLaren SLR (and the coming Mercedes SLS)

Like

• Howling V-10 sounds like a real F1 engine
• Easy to drive fast
• Carbon ceramic brakes scrub speed effortlessly and predictably
• All the creature comforts, too – from navigation to power seats

Don't like

• Even though carbon fibre dominates the car's structure, the car feels fairly heavy

jcato@globeandmail.com