The Lexus LC500 is the last of a breed it epitomized.
Lexus would say the LC has no predecessor, yet its lineage can be traced to the superlative Lexus SC and Japanese-market Toyota Soarer (Z30) produced from 1992–2000. The SC defined proportion and restraint while the LFA (2010–2012) proved Lexus could marry precision with passion. The LC 500 joined them as a clear continuation of the line: Japan’s grand-touring ideal translated for a new century. Introduced at the 2016 Detroit Auto Show, the LC was less a fresh start so much as the next interpretation of what the Z30 and LFA began.
By the time the LC arrived in 2017, Lexus had gone more than fifteen years without a true grand tourer. The SC430 was a luxury hardtop convertible that abandoned even a hint of athleticism and is thus a deviation that will not be discussed further. The LC was something new, a design-forward flagship luxury GT rather than a direct successor, yet its lineage was unmistakable.
Once dismissed as old-fashioned, tactile switches and knobs are being celebrated again for their practicality and for keeping drivers safer. Studies show how dangerous touch-only interfaces can be, and those vast screens were often less design than accounting, a cost-cutting move disguised as luxury. Automakers from Volkswagen to Ferrari are retreating, regulators are pressing back, and buttons are returning to the driver’s seat.
It’s often implied the Supra was developed first. In truth, the Lexus SC and Z30 Toyota Soarer preceded it by nearly two years, and they were so well realized that Toyota’s sports-car team later lifted their subframes, suspension, and driveline for the Mark IV Supra. The SC400 in particular became an unlikely equalizer, chosen by people with eight- to eleven-figure bank balances who could have chosen the BMW 850i or Mercedes 600SEC at twice or three times the price, respectively. From a brand that had arrived only two years prior, wealthy Americans bought the stunning Japanese coupe they likely never realized had been designed in California. Figures as divergent as the Notorious B.I.G. (who preferred the passenger seat), Wayne Newton, and Bill Gates owned them. The Lexus SC earned praise from both the automotive press and the celebrity circuit alike as a quietly devastating world-beater.
That’ll be a hundred grand
Japanese sports coupes from the 1990s are commanding prices in 2025 that would have sounded absurd a decade ago. The Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo now averages around $30,000, the Mazda RX-7 FD climbs past $50,000, and even a base Mark IV Supra fetches about $65,000, with clean Turbos pushing well into six figures. Mid-range cars such as the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 and its Dodge Stealth R/T twin still change hands in the $20,000 to $40,000 bracket, while the base 300ZX, the 3000GT SL, and the Dodge Stealth base model remain in the teens. Talk of a bubble follows every auction, and in Japan that word is loaded because the 1990s asset bubble burst rewrote the nation’s economy and disrupted its society.
Welcome to the place where logic breaks down, not with a bang but with $500 bottles of brake fluid (Rolls SZ) and the vague smell of an overheated AMEX Centurion. The below cars are not “bad cars” in the normal sense; they’re proof that the right combination of hubris, panic, and corporate disarray can move mountains, or at least a few tons of Connolly leather and steel. This is the Absurdity Index, where deeply strange automotive decisions in the luxury segment finally get their due.
The late Bruno Sacco and what many consider to be his magnum opus
I. Defending the Throne
By the late 1980s, Mercedes-Benz had little to prove. The W126 S-Class was the standard. No rival matched its presence, durability, or numbers. The idea that Stuttgart could be blindsided seemed far-fetched—until BMW changed everything.
Subtle German piece on the E32 vs W126
BMW’s E32 7 Series arrived in 1986. A year later, the 750iL dropped: Germany’s first postwar V12 sedan, and a shot straight at Stuttgart. The effect was immediate and deeply personal. Mercedes-Benz was caught flat-footed by Munich’s boldness, and by how much ground BMW covered in a single move.
1988 BMW 750iL
With the W140’s development nearly finished, Stuttgart abruptly shifted into crisis mode. Deadlines slipped by a year or more, and the planned 1989 debut was pushed all the way to 1991. The reason was obvious: Mercedes refused to arrive without a direct counter to BMW’s Zwölfzylinder. The scramble was total, with an all-new 6.0-liter M120 V12 and rapid reengineering of almost every major system. Costs surged past 1.5 billion Deutsche Marks.
Early W140 prototy—I mean Lexus LS400
The consequences were immediate. Instead of launching in 1989 alongside the Lexus LS400, whose design hinted at corporate espionage, the new S-Class appeared five years after the E32 and four years after the 750iL. For Mercedes dealers, it was painful to watch rival innovations pass them by: Toyota’s obsessive refinement, BMW’s headline-grabbing technology, Jaguar’s XJ40, and even incremental advances from Cadillac and Lincoln. The S-Class had always been the future. For the first time, it was playing catch-up.
Early tests of the W140 against the E32 were far from definitive
The brief had shifted only slightly. The goal was now to retake the crown, not simply defend it. By late 1987, the design was locked. When the W140 debuted in 1991, it was heavier, more complex, and more expensive than any Mercedes before it. It was built to make Munich’s breakthrough feel like old news.
Mechanical intimacy is on its death bed, but the balance sheet is going to save it
The 2006 Ferrari 599 Fiorano with a gated manual cost an inflation-adjusted $475,000—the right one will now fetch nearly double that
I. Where have all the manuals gone?
If you’ve never shifted a manual transmission in anger, it may be difficult to understand what the fuss is all about. A properly executed heel-toe downshift is earned—a tactile reward that people now pay a premium for in the age of performative electric car “shifts” and CVTs with pantomimed gear ratios. Manuals are slower, less forgiving of mistakes, and, especially in the case of gated manuals, ornamental more than functional. Yet their presence on the most expensive sports cars of the 20th and early 21st centuries presaged the current market for all manual transmission cars. The manual no longer exists to provide the fastest acceleration; instead, it signals intentionality—a preference for “mechanical intimacy” over outright speed.
The thrill of a perfect upshift, the ritual of winding a vintage Omega Speedmaster, the intentional pull of a shot from a La Pavoni, or the meditative process of cleaning and filling a Montblanc 149 are all rooted in a satisfaction that arises from direct, analog interaction. These experiences form a connection to the underlying craft, something that sterile, digital interfaces—like a smudged piano-black steering wheel control—cannot reproduce. Your actions have direct consequences in a way that they do not when you accelerate in an electric car, pick your Apple Watch up off its charger, press a button on a Breville, or simply pick up a new Pilot G2.
Raw speed has become ubiquitous and, at the top end, almost irrelevant. A 2024 Honda Odyssey is quicker to sixty than any Ferrari 308 ever made, just as a microwave cooks a steak faster than a charcoal grill. The Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach’s 1.77-second sprint and low-9-second quarter mile outpace any supercar or hypercar ever built, but for many enthusiasts, a slower, manual-equipped Porsche GT3 Touring or Ferrari 550 Maranello holds infinitely more appeal. This desire for mechanical intimacy—a nearly physiological pleasure in the operation of precise, analog machinery—has led to a renaissance in demand for tactile interfaces, from stick shifts to lever espresso machines. The reward is psychological as much as it is physical, something no number of programmable drive modes can replace.
Manual transmission sales, having dipped to just 0.9% of new cars in 2021, have since doubled. Manuals now stand out, not as a cost-saving measure, but as a distinguishing mark of enthusiast cars in a landscape of haptic feedback and dual-clutch automation. Ferrari has floated the possibility of reviving the manual in its multi-million-dollar Icona line, and Porsche has raised the price of the manual GT3 Touring by $80,000 in seven years. The post-COVID car bubble brought oddities: manual 911s built since 2020 have barely depreciated and are frequently marked up by tens of thousands over sticker. The GT3RS, only available with PDK since the 991.1, often brings $500,000 or more—well above its $241,300 base price.
If you want a new Ferrari, a Roma, 296, or SF90 can be had near MSRP, but only with paddle shifters. The real drama lies in the pre-owned market, where the last manual V12 Ferrari—the 2006–2012 599GTB Fiorano—has climbed from an original $475,000–$500,000 new to between $600,000 and $880,000 today, a real appreciation of over a quarter million dollars. This reversal is a market verdict on the enduring value of participation and engagement over pure metrics. Ferrari is now rumored to be reintroducing its iconic gated manual, suitably, on its Icona line of supercars—at $2M and up. Future hopeful Ferrari buyers, even of used cars, are thus essentially shut out completely from its manual transmission cars unless they have at least $300k ready to spend.
BMW’s V12 flagship didn’t just shock the establishment—it rewrote the rules
Bookends: the final (G12 M760Li) the first generation (E32 750iL) BMW V12 flagships
I. Speak Softly and Carry More Cylinders
BMW, a company known for well-made sports sedans, so thoroughly shocked the system with its new V12 and 750i/750iL (L for long wheelbase) that Mercedes delayed its new S-Class—taking an agonizing four years to respond. The undisputed elite, Rolls-Royce and Bentley, stuck to their tried-and-true formulas through 1998, arguably leading to their acquisition by BMW and Volkswagen Group, respectively, by the end of the 20th century. Jaguar found itself utterly outclassed. Aston Martin’s bizarre Lagonda sedan was a technological dead end (the 750iL walked all over it as well). And the Americans? Well, they hadn’t been true players in this game since the 1950s—Cadillac had long since abdicated the ultra-luxury throne to become a mere footnote, and Lincoln was busy churning out Town Cars for limo duty. Make no mistake—the 1988 BMW 750iL changed everything that makes a luxury flagship, and its influence on what modern luxury means cannot be overstated, 38 years and counting later.
At a Los Angeles intersection, a 1964 Impala lowrider floats on hydraulics, chrome flake shimmering like fish scales in the sun. To its left, a white Tesla with a meek sticker: “I bought it before he went crazy.” To its right, a Lamborghini Murciélago in Verde Ithaca, twelve cylinders erupting through the exhaust. The Impala is inheritance on wheels, wire rims, candy paint, and cultural preservation. The Tesla hums with fading virtue. Once a badge of conscious futurism, it is now racked by liability, shackled to its maker’s politics. The Lamborghini is magnificent in itself, a masterpiece of carbon and combustion. Yet in this scene it registers as theater, money’s operetta in Italian. In a culture that pretends to have moved past symbols, the car remains autobiography in motion.
Post-materialism promised sameness: billionaires in hoodies, feeds stripped of ornament, swipe-culture democracy. Yet the road refuses flattening. When every phone is just a glass tile and $2,000 hoodies look like the ones at Walmart, the car stays stubbornly expressive. It is the second-most expensive thing most Americans ever buy, and, unlike homes, we bring it to work with us. Every commute is performance. Every driveway, a declaration. The car tells on us.
Thorstein Veblen saw this more than a century ago. A Veblen good is a paradox: its value rises not despite its high price, but because of it. As a paradox, pure Veblen goods don’t truly exist outside of a five-hundred-dollar bill encased in acrylic, a treasure defined entirely by its own uselessness. Keep it sealed and it mocks you, but try to break it out and you’ll destroy it. Cars, anything beyond the most basic ones, are certainly Veblen goods: luxuries, not necessities. Every person driving today could meet their needs with a 1993 Honda Accord: modern safety equipment, heat and A/C, even power windows and cruise control. Everything beyond this is luxury: expense made visible, status rendered in steel and glass.
David Gartman charted three phases of car culture. First came class distinction: in the early twentieth century, mere ownership was status enough. Then the mass-market era, when make and model divided the bourgeois from the working class. And now, in the U.S. today: lifestyle allegiance.
