Building a family face for a range of cars can be tricky. Aston Martin, it has to be said, have it nailed. Ford’s new strategy is to just, er, pinch Aston Martin’s look. And Lexus? Well, they’re still persevering with their ‘spindle grille’ motif. And good luck to ’em – sure, it looks like Predator, but perhaps that’s the sort of aggressive aesthetic they’re after.
The latest tech that’s hiding behind the slobbering Predator jowls is relevant to our interests too, being a high-output fuel cell aiming to smash into the market around 2020. The catchy LF-FC name stands for ‘Lexus Future Flagship Car/Fuel Cell’ (yeah, you can see why they abbreviated), and it slots into their vision of the ultimate eco-car technology: ultra-clean hydrogen energy, with nothing more than water vapour emanating from the exhaust.
Lexus describe the LC-CF as ‘aggressively elegant’, which is pretty much the area that Kim Kardashian is aiming for and missing, but it succeeds where she fails by offering limousine-like luxury, next-gen gesture control interfaces, and a strategically positioned fuel cell stack to optimise weight distribution. Which is something Kim just cannot boast.
The concept also claims a Volvo-like zero-casualty target from its integrated safety controls, which is a notion that, frankly, the Predator would fundamentally disagree with. That’s where Lexus arguably find their hook.
