To call the LF-1 merely a departure for the traditionally conservative Lexus brand would be an emphatic minimization. It’s a balmy December morning. I’m standing in an L.A. photo studio and bearing witness to the Lexus LF-1 concept. This is the first time anyone has seen the tangible, functional, completed evidence of Toyota’s styling team’s efforts since it returned from the specialty-car fabricators at Sivax.
For more than a year, the 11-member Calty team pored over sketches, renderings, scale models, paint samples, interior fabrics and materials, and a full-size clay model. Now, with their collective work effort starkly posed in front of them, the group is speaking in hushed, almost reverential tones.
Suddenly, in a fit of enthusiasm, Ian Cartabiano, Calty’s chief designer and the overseer of the exterior design…
