Top Gear

Tonight, the stupidest car in the world.

A Vauxhall you might actually like.

And who has won what in the Top Gear awards ceremony?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello everybody! Welcome, and a happy new year.

Happy new year to everybody.

Now, like many of you here, I suffer from insomnia. I've tried everything over the years.

I've tried eating lettuce, counting sheep, I even resorted last night

to James May's new talking book. LAUGHTER

That didn't work either. Now, Richard Hammond seems to have

accidentally uncovered what might be a cure.

This is a Lexus.

It's called the RX 450h, and it's everything you'd expect

from what Alan Partridge called the Japanese Mercedes.

It's quiet, it's well-made, it's got a lentil matic hybrid engine, all very clever.

All things you'd expect from a car company that has won many awards over the years.

Neatest panel gap consistency in the executive saloon sector award.

And the coveted, that's a nice paint finish award. Three years running.

I think you're getting the picture. All Lexuses are beautifully made

and impeccably engineered to achieve unmatched levels of dullness.

So when they announced recently,

"We've made a sports car," oh, how we laughed in the office!

Right up until the moment we saw it.

Yeah... Egg on face.

Foot in mouth. Humble pie, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It's called the LFA.

Despite being a Lexus, it doesn't have many Lexussy features.

There's no eat your greens hybrid hiding under the bonnet.

There's no golf clubs hiding in the boot. It's even got a spoiler.

It's the real deal.

And if you're still not convinced that this thing is a supercar,

then let me give you some nerdy-licious numbers.

552 horse power.

Same as the Gallardo. 0 to 60, 3.7 seconds.

Same as a Ferrari 599.

Top speed, 202 mph. That's faster than an Aston Martin DBS.

OK, I think what I need to do here is just find out how that works.

Stop.

Sport.

Ooh, yeah!

That I like.

ENGINE REVS

And go!

Woah...that's...explosive!

It's immediate.

There's no waiting for a second. It is just stop, wham, going!

150.

170.

That's really quite a fast car.

Now, this being a Lexus, you might expected to be not just a supercar,

but a supercar full of immense attention to detail.

You'd be right.

4.8 litre V10, and yet somehow the Lexus boffins have managed to make it

only the size of a V8, and as light as a V6.

But that's not the most amazing thing about it.

No, the most amazing thing is the way it revs.

The engine is so lively,

they've had to fit this computer game style virtual rev counter.

Because a normal analogue rev counter can't keep pace

with how quickly this thing gains and loses revs.

And then there's the beautifully nerdy flappy paddle gear change.

The paddle to change up is lighter to use than the paddle to change down.

Just so you know you're going in the right direction.

HE LAUGHS

Amazing stuff from a company that has never built a supercar before.

Which is why they took their sweet time over this one.

Nine years in fact.

At first, the body was made of aluminium.

Then, after years of work, it was deemed too heavy,

so it was scrapped and they began all over again, using carbon fibre.

Lightness was an obsession.

The steering wheel, for example, is also made of carbon fibre.

The pedals are milled from a single piece of aluminium.

And even the complex Lexus stereo has been a on the Atkins.

Geekiness is everywhere here.

These mirrors are specially shaped so they

funnel air into these air intakes.

The designers were so obsessed with good handling,

that even the water bottle for the windscreen washers

is buried somewhere deep down there, next to the petrol tank, to try and

keep as much of the weight as low as possible and inside the wheelbase.

Just like an F1 car.

Don't be fooled by this gap.

That's not shoddy build quality, that's a specially designed intake.

So, it's definitely a Lexus, and it definitely looks like a supercar.

The question is, does it feel like one?

It's lively...

TYRES SCREECH

The brakes are ferocious. After caning it around this track, no sign of getting tired.

There's an initial lead from the front end. It's quite a soft feeling.

The thing just wallows in,

and you can give it a boot-full with the rear end.

In!

HE LAUGHS

TYRES SCREECH

Oh, no.

TYRES SCREECH

Oh, God.

Get it wrong and it takes absolutely no prisoners. It just spits you out.

Get it right though, and you'll be laughing.

Oh, yes! There you go!

HE LAUGHS

There we are. What a turn-up from the librarian of the car world.

Which brings me to the obvious question...

Would one buy one?

That all depends how much it costs.

£50,000, oh, yes!

£100,000, yeah. £150,000? Well, it's expensive, but it'll be exclusive.

As it happens, the LFA doesn't cost £150,000. No.

The LFA costs £340,000.

That's 130,000 more than a Ferrari 599.

For a car that's no faster than a 599.

And you know what? Even at that price,

Lexus won't make any money on each one they sell.

What this car is, is an engineer's wet dream.

It's a brilliant creation, and praise the Lord it exists.

But price wise, it's on a different planet.

And there's another slight issue.

At the end of the day, and here it is, the actual end of the day,

yes, I'm in the Lexus. Oh, God.

I can never get away from that.

"Will the owner of a £340,000 LEXUS move it?"

That's me. Sorry.

It just doesn't...

It's a Lexus. It just is.

APPLAUSE

I'm baffled. I'm more baffled than I've ever been.

Hammond, does this car, does it do 1158 mph?

Yes. Really? No. So, it isn't six times faster than a Nissan GTR?

No. But it costs six times more?

Yeah, it does. Why? Well, it's made of exotic materials.

It needs to be! It needs to be made out of myrrh!

Is this windscreen wiper made out of saffron? No.

But there's a lot of carbon fibre. Hammond, my bog seat at home is made out of carbon fibre.

It didn't cost 340,000 quid.

Honestly, I just don't understand this car.

Hopefully, our tame racing driver will be able to make sense of it.

Some say

that he has to take his shoes off with an Allen key.

And that his new year's resolution is to eat fewer mice.

All we know is, he's called The Stig.

And he's off! It's wet out there, yet again.

Thank you, Copenhagen!

Let's see how the confusing and expensive Lexus copes in these conditions.

Here he comes...

Look at that, through the first corner. Rocking up a bit there.

A little bit of over steer on the way out.

CHAS AND DAVE SONG PLAYS

Stig, still enjoying a cockney knees-up,

which is strange because his knees are on his face.

There's Chicago, a little bit more over steer.

How is it going to cope on a moist hammerhead?

Will that clever weight distribution help?

Running a bit wide, a bit slithery.

You can hear he's having to use the throttle very gingerly as he gets out of there.

Right, now he can really mash his paw down.

This thing sounds like an old F1 car.

Let's hope it's not using know-how from the Toyota team, or it'll be rubbish.

Two corners left, spearing into the second to last one.

Just a flash of corrective lock. Gambon, that's clean.

And across the line.

Do you have the time? I do.

It did it in 1:22.8, which puts it there.

But critically, I've got to write on there that it's wet, very wet.

That's the fastest wet lap we've ever had. By a long way.

That next one is Lambo Gallardo. The Gallardo, there. Look at that!

Three seconds a lap faster for three times the price!

It's a bargain!

At the beginning of every year, the BBC gives us a big lump of money

and tells us to go away and make 14 programmes.

What we do is we divide that lump of money by 14,

and that gives us the budget for every show.

It's simple! Unfortunately, and I don't

know how this happened, we've made a complete Horlicks of it.

Which meant that when we got to make this show, we had,

and I'm not joking, I'm not making this up, almost no money at all.

No. And you didn't actually the help with your Lexus film? Why?

It had a space ship in it. It wasn't actually there when I filmed it. Was it?

So, it was added? Yeah. And that's cheaper than just using

a real space ship. I don't think it is.

That stuff costs a bloody fortune.

We know that now the bill has come in. I'm sorry, I got carried away.

Listen, stop bickering you two.

We now have to do the news and that's impossible, because it's not the week you think it is.

It's actually December, December 9th. It really is. We had the studio booked for today,

and we've had to use it even though we know you're in 2010.

This fly flying around here has actually died by the time you watch this.

The real problem is obviously, between now and when you're watching this, anything could have happened.

Somebody could have invented a car that I don't know, runs on jelly.

We might have declared war with France...

HE LAUGHS

Instead of the news, what we're going to do, we're going to take

a look ahead to some cars that are coming out

this year. This year. This year. Yes!

Lots of them, in fact. There's the new Jaguar XJ, we're very much looking forward to that.

The Aston Martin 177, the million-pound Aston.

But the one that really caught my eye is this, it's the Honda CR-V,

and I think you'll agree it looks absolutely fantastic.

However, I then read the bumpf.

It has a 1.5 litre engine, and a boot full of lithium ion batteries.