2011 Ferrari 599 HGTE vs. 2012 Lexus LFA

You’ve got to admire the Toyota Motor Company’s cojones. Most carmakers usually  work their way up to producing a $400,000 supercar through the time-honored method of building expensive sports cars for decades and concurrently making their reputations while on the racetrack. Think Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, and Porsche.

Not Toyota. Before the Lexus LFA was announced, Toyota had only one truly fast, modern sports car to its credit: the Supra Turbo, which was sold here from 1987 to 1999. And even it was priced against the Porsche 968, not the 911. In the years since the Supra disappeared from the Toyota armory, the company has concentrated on shoring up profits with lots of worthy but stolid sedans, pickups, and SUVs, but it hasn’t made a seriously rapid sports car.

Until now. Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder—and the man currently in charge of the company—is a racer and a sports-car fan. He wants to put some soul back into the organization. The LFA, which is positioned as a flagship for the F Performance line, was an on-off project for 10 years before it finally got the green light. Initially, it was going to use aluminum construction with a V-10 engine that drew on and reflected Toyota’s Formula 1 program. Over time, however, the goals changed. Toyota bailed out of F1 at the end of 2009, and the LFA ended up as a rolling test bed for the company’s new technologies, most notably the use of carbon fiber. The LFA has a carbon-fiber central chassis section with bolted-on aluminum subframes front and rear, which make crash repair easier and cheaper. Carbon-fiber composites account for about 65 percent of the body structure’s mass.

The rest of the LFA is relatively conventional. It has a front-mounted, Yamaha-developed 4.8-liter V-10 engine that makes 553 horsepower. Technical highlights include racing-style features such as a dry-sump oil system, titanium valves and connecting rods, an individual throttle body for each cylinder, magnesium-alloy cam covers, and carbon- and silicon-coated rocker arms with integrated oil jets. The rear-mounted transmission is a single-clutch automated manual, and the car, naturally, has carbon-ceramic brake rotors. Lexus is building just 500 LFAs for worldwide consumption, of which 50 will have a Nürburgring package that adds 10 horsepower, a stiffer suspension, a fixed rear spoiler, and—gulp!—$70,000 to the $375,875 sticker.

Ferrari has a bit more experience producing exotic two-place, front-engine coupes. Back in 1948, Carrozzeria Allemano made a coupe body for the 166 Sport chassis. Since then, there has been a long list of great front-engine, V-12 Ferrari two-seat coupes, including the 250GT, the 250GT Berlinetta Lusso, the 275GTB, the 365GTB/4 “Daytona,” and, more recently, the 550/575M Maranello range.

Ferrari’s current front-engine, V-12 two-seater, the 599GTB Fiorano, has been on sale in the U.S. since 2007. This successor to the 575M uses aluminum for its space frame and panelwork. As with the LFA, the engine is mounted back in the frame and takes drive to a single-clutch, automated manual transmission mounted in back, giving a slightly rear-biased weight distribution. The 6.0-liter V-12 engine is a derivation of the one in the Enzo supercar and makes a stout 612 horsepower.

During 2009, Ferrari addressed some slight concerns about the 599’s woolly at-limit behavior with a package called Handling Gran Turismo Evoluzione (HGTE). It features stiffer and shorter springs, a larger-diameter rear anti-roll bar, wider front wheels, and faster shifts and firmer magnetorheological shock settings when the steering-wheel-mounted manettino switch is set to the sportiest “race” mode. Inside, HGTEs receive every carbon-fiber option. The package adds $30,095 to the 599GTB’s sticker. With options, our HGTE-equipped car nearly hit $400,000.

Believe it or not, there was no HGTE test car in the U.S., so we had to make our way to Europe to conduct this comparo. We picked up the cars in England and drove to the hills and valleys of Wales, where the roads are lightly trafficked, lightly policed, and perfect for fast driving.