Night. Into the desert. Destination Vdara, City Center on the Vegas Strip, then breakfast with Peter and Gayle Brock and a tour of their new home, and the inevitable discussion of our shared favorite topic, libertarian politics.
Electro-chromic gauges laser-sharp, navi screen off, dash lighting muted, immersed in the true darkness of the desert night. Subtle rumble of that big engine, mere whispers from the tires, Lady Lawyer dozing in the passenger seat—a glass and leather cocoon.
Around town the day before, making heavy use of the 416 horsepower, IS F burned through gas at a prodigious rate, so much so that before final lift-off for Vegas in the dead of night, we stopped for gas in Claremont, one of the last vestiges of human civilization before the climb into the high desert. Topped off with a mere four gallons–a clear measure of my paranoia about fuel consumption–the range meter was not optimistic about our easy stages to Vegas without a fuel stop in Primm. The engine computer figured I’d continue to squeeze down hard on the throttle to hear the Can-Am V8 Philharmonic.
Anxiety fell away after we climbed the San Bernardino Mountains in near-silence, slipping past Hesperia and Barstow and the other carbuncles of the LA Outer Rim before shooting our leather-trimmed pod into the Great Empty. That super-tall eighth gear ratio pays dividends on the highway and the trip computer was recalculating my behavior most admirably. Instead of fretting about a mandatory 1 AM fuel stop in Primm just across the California border, with all the related concerns burned into the sub-conscious by movies like The Hills Have Eyes, we sailed past, Lady Lawyer comfortably snoozing in the big leather chair, cruise control set at 80+, a Viper and a Corvette the only cars to shoot past us on the drive, finally arriving at Vdara’s valet stand with the better part of a half-tank to spare. IS F proved itself beyond doubt a fully capable four-door sport tourer. Eighth gear is a range extender.
We’d explore sports sedan capabilities in the mountains and deserts of Arizona, then reconfirm our conclusions a few days later on our home test loop in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Vegas
Vdara is the civilized option in Las Vegas: a spa hotel with generously proportioned, richly furnished suites and impeccable standards for cleanliness. Nothing cramped, old or cheap about the place. If you want to roll the dice or play cards, walk across the circular drive to Aria. You’ll not hear the annoying sound of slot machines in Vdara.
With no conventions in town the week of our trip, Vdara’s suites were only a few dollars more than a Best Western motel with haphazard furnishings. How can you not have a good night’s sleep?
Sharp desert light, Vdara’s forecourt on the traffic circle. IS F brought around by a valet, smile beaming brightly. Interesting to see who pays attention to this subtle car. The valets are grinning, in love with it. The first valet pauses for a moment in the driver’s seat, relishing his last grip of the chunky leather steering wheel, directing another valet to load our bags—he’s equally enamored with the car, asking simply, “Fast?” I smile and shake my head, yes. The first valet rakes the dash with his eyes and his hands fall to the silver-impregnated carbon-fiber trim, a rare bit of automotive design that can be accurately dubbed unique. He takes a last squeeze of the small steering wheel then springs from the car.
Among the guests at the valet stand, a young male, a wandering proton broken away from a nucleus of Brazilians, several in UCLA sweatshirts. He walks over to admire the wheels and massive brakes, giving me a sheepish grin, comprehending the subtle performance message—under the radar. He knows this is not just a Japanese luxury sedan his sister might want to drive in Westwood Village. The multi-generational groups of Chinese—a big part of Vegas tourism thanks to the Macau operations, and burgeoning wealth of the East—are oblivious, climbing into their bare-bones rental Chevies. They don’t get it.
Brock
We meet Gayle and Peter for a pleasant late-morning meal, then follow their Ford crew cab up to the new hacienda.
Brock’s pad is pretty cool. Gayle is the most devoted of wives, and she bought the place because Peter missed a big western desert sky and dry air. The Pacific Northwest where they have lived for some years has nothing comparable to offer.
After looking over the house, Peter and I retire to the garage to talk politics and crawl over his first Brock coupe, with LS7 motor and the newly added roof vents that generate excellent cooling airflow in the cockpit. He’s proud of the roof vents, proving a theory he had when the original and inspirational CSX Cobra Daytonas were built. Those Daytona coupes were famously hot and miserable, real torture chambers for the drivers. Brock had wanted to apply a can opener to their roofs and add small vents at the back of the cabin, creating circulation without paying any major aerodynamic price. Nearly a half century later, vindication.
Behind the Superformance Coupe, his ancient Mercedes Diesel, which I have not seen in more than a decade, since he and I had dinner with Danny Panoz years ago in Orange County, a dinner over which Brock told us about his impending move to Redmond, Washington, to be with Gayle. A big Mercedes Diesel is an enduring bit of industrial design.
While lowering the hood on the Brock coupe, Peter said, “I have everything I ever dreamed of having in life, and I get to have it all at the same time.” For a man who never lost the wonder of a child, and who has always pursued his dreams rather than conform, that’s a big, bold statement. He’s designing alloy wheels, growing his parts business, taking design commissions to recreate significant race cars, selling his aerodynamic Orca car trailers, all with the energetic, saber-sharp, and beautiful Gayle running the business. Considering he designed the show car that became the Stingray Corvette, designed the Cobra Daytona Coupe, gave the Japanese their first racing championships with BRE Datsuns, and invented the modern hang-glider, his pronouncement has weight, gravity. The house, the work, the cars, the freedom, the mental stimulation, the creative opportunities, the girl. Everything, indeed.
Buoyant seeing my old friend and childhood hero so happily settled into a life any car enthusiast would love to claim as his own, I steer Lady Lawyer into the IS F and we head for Lake Mead and Flagstaff, maybe Sedona if we can navigate Highway 89A before sundown. It’s late winter and the sun drops early. We want to fully enjoy 89A, not dodge deer and other furry creatures in the night. We also want to fully enjoy a comfortable roll through easy curves.
On To Flagstaff
Past Lake Mead and into the prehistoric volcanic terrain skewered by Interstate 40 East, a scenic if undemanding route. We saw a raggedy man literally step out of the desert brush and onto the highway’s apron, plastic bag in tow. Was he out there harvesting snakes to sell? Or sleeping out there, a hobo? Who knows. He was straight out of Mad Max: Thunder Dome.
Lengthy discussion ensues over the fates of such people in hard times, from the boom-and-bust depressions of the late 19th century that scattered people across the interior of the US, to that final big wallop, the Great Depression. Lady Lawyer was a mere pup when Reagan brought about the rebirth of the US economy after Carter and Ford had proven unable to fix all the havoc created by LBJ’s drunken spending spree of the Sixties. So many people were busted up in that recession, from the hyper-inflation of Carter until 1983 or so. And this one has been worse. I consider myself fortunate to have entered adult life when the Reagan Boom began. Reminders can stagger out of the desert: count your blessings.
Not every road needs to be left-right-left slashing. There’s much to be said for a meandering pair of lanes in a vast, open landscape, big sky above. As always, we discussed the travels of Lady Lawyer’s grandfather, an insurance exec who motored across the western US in big luxury cars from the late Thirties to the Sixties, reveling in the freedom of the highway and relative emptiness of the West, the Golden Age of American motoring. Today he’d be in an office most the time, hard-wired, or hopping on small planes. Travel in a big, powerful, comfortable car is a special experience. As always, it remains an exclusive domain.
One point becomes clear: the IS body structure has held up well over the years. I drove the IS350 extensively at its original press launch. The quiet and solidity of the car remains evident. The big tires of the IS F rumble a bit, and even at low revs with cruise control set the IS F engine murmurs deep basso, not silent like the IS 350’s V6. But unlike many sedans that have too much engine stuffed into them, the IS body structure remains unbreachable. You do not get any sense the IS F is at the limit of its structural integrity, coping with the power and weight of the engine. It’s solid as Hoover Dam. Like any Toyota engine, the block is alloy with iron liners, and the new D-4S direct injection heads are alloy, too. Still, it’s a lot of motor in a C-class car. Speaks to the body’s integrity.
We climb out of the desert, into mountains and forest, 80+ mph the whole way, enjoying the landscape and dialogue. Just enough to move along quickly without unwanted attention. We spar with hopped-up truckers running their own race on the way to Williams, drafting one another and nearly jackknifing in front of us, trailers swaying, violently a couple of times. We were prepared to see a truck capsize on a couple of occasions, blocking the road ahead. All at speeds over 80 and 90 mph through patchy fog. The truckers clearly had something going on, as they took up both lanes, swapping back and forth, offering no opportunity to pass. Patience. Wind is blowing hard, kicking up snow from the verge, but the IS F remains as close to silent as you’d want in a sporting sedan. No aches or pains after hours in the saddle.
Whether it was fear of Arizona highway patrol or a rare moment of good sense as the fog turned to flurries higher up in the mountains, the truckers suddenly slowed down, en masse, and we were able to line up a clean, safe shot. When you’re in an expensive and rare car, with your beloved nearby, discretion is the better part of valor. Once they settled into a rolling 18-wheeler freight train in the right lane, I goosed past them and we made our first sustained high-speed run, to put as much distance as possible between their haggard Kenworths and the Great White Shark. Going by, Lady Lawyer provided them a disapproving, disdainful look. The engine’s big airboxes popped open, the D-4S direct-injection heads set to work, and we enjoyed the gorgeous IS F symphony. The trucks disappeared behind us, never to be seen again.
IS F remained our quiet cocoon even at sustained triple-digit speeds. Upshifts under full throttle brought no shock to the drivetrain, merely extended the rush of acceleration. Lexus has refined the conventional automatic to a high art form. With shifts this smooth, precise and shock-free, there’s no need for the extra weight of a dual-clutch transmission, not yet at least.
Sun long gone, Highway 89A best enjoyed in daylight, we settle for a night in snowy, ice-cold Flagstaff. With little desire to roam, fine dining was not part of our Flagstaff experience, and we couldn’t even find a classic diner anywhere nearby. Next time, we’ll research diners and fine hotels before launching any high-speed canoe on a long trip.
We settled for an Italian restaurant hiding in the back of a dim parking lot, and were surprised by the quality—we were equally surprised to find the car safe when we were done with the meal. Some rough customers eating in the darker corners, not a place we’d ever visit again, but a cold night and a long drive can make Chef Boyardee seem pretty good.
Flagstaff To Sedona
Dirty snow broomed and shoveled up against the building and distant corners of the hotel parking lot, ice defining cracks in the crazed, broken asphalt, dense plumes of breath in the morning cold. No rain, no falling snow, no mist or fog. A hard cold. Painfully blue high mountain sky. Bone dry air. Start sipping water to avoid dehydration. Load the bags. Over the railroad tracks to the highway entrance. Flagstaff is a rough town.
Now the star of the show and beginning of a long day: Flagstaff to Sedona to Jerome to the Arizona desert to the beach, just under 500 miles.
Highway 17 south, exit Highway 89A. Off the Interstate, a right, a quick left, a snow-lined two-lane opens, pines creating a tall, narrow tree tunnel. What better road could there be?
While on this open high-mountain forested plain, we stop to snap a few photos in a stymied development of expensive mountain getaways. Accustomed to beat-up desert cars and crazed truckers, now we are in a storybook forest parked next to a Bentley Continental convertible, a Maserati Quattroporte, a nice selection of German sedans and a brother Lexus.
Prospective buyers all, converging this Saturday morning to speak with an agent about available lots.
Deep breaths of mountain air, we shove off, logging long periods at triple digit speeds, mixed with big, open turns, gently rising and falling, snow at the verge, steep slopes in the near distance.
In the slower sections, we put windows down to fully enjoy the scent of the forest. A sheer mountain wall at the end of a last big straight is the gateway to the tall, narrow canyon leading to Sedona.
Interior
The interior is magnificent—tidy and efficient in that Japanese way. F Sport’s signature chalky blue accents the base of the steering wheel’s center spoke. The silver-impregnated carbon-fiber trim is bright and techie without bouncing light inside. Headliner, carpets, most of the soft-skin trim is black or the deepest shade of gray, keeping reflections to a minimum inside the car. Controls and switches have an oiled precision–subtle, smooth, and positive.
The seats are an ideal compromise between too little support and too aggressive for a car that will likely spend a lot of time slogging to the office, not belting out quick circuits of a skid pad.
In the tightest downhill hairpins carrying us to Sedona, the lat bolsters dug in firmly and held without being painful. Some automotive writers love the seats of the most aggressive sports cars, seats that swallow you up, pin you in place. They’re special, and appropriate in a Porsche Turbo or GT3. But not in a sport tourer. IS F seats are not so heavily bolstered that you need to be popped out of them after a drive, leaving a sheen of back sweat. You won’t sweat in these seats, either cruising or when working the car hard.
Out back, the rear seat is typical for this class of luxury car. Enough leg and foot room if everyone is about median height, no problem for a weekend foursome or a young family’s trip to the movies. But these cars usually have just a driver. The back seat is often luxurious storage. I would not want to spend more than 20 minutes back there on a drive to the movies or dinner.
Gauges are startling, brilliant laser-sharp needles and pin-perfect numerals on a black background. Day or night, you can read them. Nothing fuzzy, soft or vague.
Pedals are big, with an easy curve to the surface. And a flat, broad dead pedal is always highly prized. Besides, the alloy faces of the pedals are a well-known signature for performance cars, and brighten up the otherwise black and seemingly bottomless footwells.
Sedona to Jerome
Tight canyon opens and suddenly red rock pillars, stone totems, buttes and mounds of red marbles that could pass for mid-20th century sculpture dominate the landscape. John Carter of Mars would feel right at home.
Resorts crop up, spas for hot-stone massage, then Sedona. We’re starved. Parked on the main drag. One fine art gallery after another, interspersed with café latte bars. At a bakery, we ask the college girls behind the counter about a place for breakfast. They size us up with a glance and send us down the street two blocks.
Wildflower Bread Company, an Arizona chain. After the Steinbeck-grade naturalism of Flagstaff—grim times, grim parking lots with poorly lit Italian restaurants and a Chinese place that looked like Ptomaine poisoning served on a mooshoo pancake—Sedona felt like home. Seven-grain toast, eggs over easy, café latte, and everyone around us playing with iPads, Macbooks, iPhones and wearing Patagonia vests to rival Lady Lawyer’s retro Stanford sweatshirt. Bright-eyed college kids manning the tables. Unlikely we’d be caught up in any more NASCAR tractor-trailer races on snowy roads, running through patchy fog. Blue skies, green pastures, big red rocks.
Fed and caffeinated, we load up the Great White Shark and head for Jerome, beginning a magnificent stretch of road that hours later would connect us with the Interstate, in the middle of the desert not far from the California border. Mountains to test the IS F as a sports sedan.
Jerome is an artist’s colony, a remainder of the Wild West mining past, and Arizona’s equivalent of an Italian hilltop town. The climb into Jerome begins with stone retaining walls to the passenger side that could just as easily be along the Petit Madonie circuit in Sicily, Targa Florio. I was hoping to see Italian graffiti supporting the efforts of Nino Vaccarella and Nuvolari.
The road to Jerome is sometimes part of the Copperstate 1000 vintage rally. Too many lumbering GM SUVs taking up space on the road. So we slow down, buying time until a car appears in our rearview mirror, then accelerate hard and enjoy a sequence of corners before once again catching the slow-moving SUVs. We pick off SUVs whenever the road affords a clean shot.
Once in Jerome, well, you bumble along, avoiding tourists, pausing while Suburbans attempt parallel parking, then you hook it hard left up a steep incline and you’re a few hundred yards from dozens of miles of the exceptional mountain driving.
Mountains to Deserts
89A falls out of the mountains from Jerome onto a high mountain plain, then on to Prescott. The roads here are not choppy and broken, as on the canyons from Flagstaff to Sedona. These are the perfect roads enthusiasts dream of, a pure test of cornering capability and steering input.
IS F has electric power steering, a technology I cannot criticize enough in most cars. But just as VW has mastered the new technology, so too has Lexus. The same guys who worked on the LFA steering worked on IS F, and it shows. Perhaps there will never be anything to match a perfectly sorted hydraulic assist system, the pressures of the hydraulic fluid causing the rubber lines to flex and give the sensation we all know as “feel,” but IS F is remarkably blessed. In the tightest of the downhill run from Prescott to the desert, IS F steering was flawless, and rewarding. The car did exactly what was asked, the newly retuned suspension giving ample seat-of-the-pants feedback. Yes, a BMW M3 will have that smidge more feel, which might be helpful on a track day, or when really pushing it on a mountain road. But I’m not sure if you’ll really miss it, the IS F is so good.
On the road, you’ll never run out of brake. The pedal has a firm, deliberate feel without forgetting this is a luxury car. Even diving into downhill corners at high speeds, the brakes are more than a match for physics.
Though you are conscious of the mass of the four-door body behind you in really fast corners that drop away, the car is cat-like, sure-footed. In corners with significant mid-corner drop-offs, big elevation changes, the IS F’s new tuning proves itself. Sure, you can feel that slight touch of body weight—she’s not a dainty girl—but IS F is poised. No surprises, no oh-my-God moments.
One never tires of dropping down a gear or two and opening up the throttle–the engine sounds fabulous. Airboxes open just below 3,800 rpm. It’s tuned to be operatic, not gruff. IS F is primarily about the engine and the smooth eight-speed transmission, with braking and handling nearly equal to the powertrain. Shifts are immediate and utterly smooth under medium to heavy throttle. If you’re dawdling through an Arizona high-mountain road stop, looking for a gas station, a downshift might actually be perceptible, but it’s still smooth. Lexus has not moved to dual-clutch transmissions with the LFA, or in the IS F. To repeat, a conventional automatic transmission, perfected.
In a few sections of these Arizona mountain roads we were given prelude to our discoveries on our mountain test loop: the suspension is unperturbed crossing different surfaces, like jumping from asphalt to a concrete bridge in the middle of a big sweeping 90-100 mph corner. Our mountain test loop in California has a range of surfaces, from billiard-table flawless to broken and crackled: IS F performed without flaw. IS F can be thrown around lower speed corners like a bank robber’s car. Just chuck it into the corner, work the steering and enjoy.
On the big steady-state 90-100 mph sweepers in the upper reaches of our mountain test loop, the suspension was poised and balanced, begging for more throttle. Once you move beyond low-speed hairpins, IS F rewards a very steady, smooth hand.
Shifting to Sport also makes a difference, as the engine and transmission ECUs will hold revs longer and higher in each gear.
Hot Wheels Desert Track
Outside Prescott the road is as perfect as any you’ll find in the world, and beautifully maintained. It changes, from a two-lane to a one-way for the final tumble out of the sky, curling down the side of the mountain.
Then suddenly, one last left-hander and it’s all over. No more beautiful mountain curves, no more incredible sequences of left right left. It’s over, and you’re at the top of Arizona’s best interpretation of a Hot Wheels track, about to fall out of the gate and let gravity build your speed. Nothing but flat, open scrub desert for more than a hundred miles. A long, straight Arizona State two-lane, disappearing into heat mirage.
Squeeze down hard. IS F’s airboxes pop open, port injectors kick in to supplement the direct injectors and fill out that midrange torque, the roar begins, the shifts are flicked off with paddles, virtually no interruption in the acceleration, and you’re rolling along at 130, more. The car is absolutely unflustered by the rhythm set up by ripples, bumps and undulations in the sheet of aging asphalt–this road is not so flawlessly maintained as the mountain curves from Jerome to this moment when you fall out of the sky. Whatever changes were made to damping and springing by the IS F engineers, they suit the real world. At a sustained 120, 130, 140 or more on a worn two-lane strip of asphalt, IS F is more than happy to go for more. It has that trait of all great cars: the faster you go, the better it feels.
Lady Lawyer non-plussed and dozing in the passenger seat–it’s been a rough week of petitions, briefs and court appearances–I launch one big acceleration run after another. Hit 120 or 130, step deeply into the brakes without sending Lady Lawyer into the dashboard, bring it down to a walk, then do it all over again. The sound of the engine with airboxes open wide, electric-smooth shifts at full throttle, the car bounding along. What might have been a painful, boring slog on empty desert roads ends up taking only a short bit of time, and is the surprise highlight of the trip, with no Baby Boomer Harley riders clogging up the path as they did on several occasions near Jerome. On these roads, you can go as fast as you like, a limitless horizon.
IS F is nowhere near as violently fast as the Nissan GT-R we tested some months ago, but then again it’s far more civilized, compromised toward fast touring and not outright performance. But you’d have to be pretty jaded to say IS F gathers speed. IS F accelerates hard whether you start with a 10 mph roll-on, or dip in hard at 80 mph aiming for 140. She goes.
We slow when approaching the decaying outposts of 1940s civilization, the towns in need of rural high-speed Internet because the government can’t afford to keep sending postmen. Horrible stucco boxes with chunks falling out along the base. And occasionally, a solid old blockhouse built a long time ago, looking ready for refurbishment. At least here we see none of the McMansions that dotted the trail from Sedona to Prescott.
Google Earth will show it well: 89 carries you south and west through Yarnell and Congress, then Wenden then Salome on Highway 60, and 60 runs all the way to I-10 West. Look carefully to see other roads that shoot through the empty desert. Wonderful playground.
Dinosaurs and Date Shakes
I-10 is boring but not all bad, until you reach the Outer Rim of Los Angeles. We stopped at a Chevron station next to the General Patton Museum in Chiriaco. Packed with long lines in every lane, a madhouse. We probably could have made home without trouble, confidence fully built in the range-extending wonders of the Lexus eight-speed, but topping off seemed prudent. Besides, General Patton is a personal hero, and Lady Lawyer grew up a two-minute walk from the chapel where the Pattons attended Sunday service. The statue of Patton at the museum is monumental; at the San Gabriel chapel near our home, the statue is merely life-size. The museum has a great collection of tanks, too.
Past Palm Springs and near the Morongo Indian casino, infamous to anyone from LA, we pulled off for an early evening meal. Hadley’s Fruit and Nut House, a Southern California icon. Date shakes are a peculiarity natives of the West know and new arrivals will have to figure out on their own. Development of fig and date orchards goes back more than a century, and Hadley’s has been mixing up date shakes since 1931. In recent years, the empty land between Hadley’s and the famous dinosaur statues to the east has been filled with the usual nightmare of convenience stores, gas stations and drive-through restaurants serving up broiled gristle. Parked at Hadley’s, enjoying IS F’s idle for a moment, rousing Lady Lawyer enough to walk inside to relieve her hunger crabbiness, we both felt sorry for the travelers who would choose a fast food burger over the perfectly prepared turkey, bacon and avocado sandwich that the Hadley’s ladies were about to prepare for us. Really? A Del Taco burrito or a Taco Bell chalupa is preferable? Fools. As expected, the ladies of Hadley’s prepared a work of art, a Norman Rockwell of a sandwich, with two date shakes.
Fed, fueled, and inspired by General Patton, time for the final push, through Mulletville and onto the beach.
Home. A bit less than 500 miles in a day, much of it over mountains and two-lane desert roads, pushing hard. Tired, but not fatigued or beat up. IS F proved a luxurious and capable sport tourer.
Conclusion
On the BMW 1M Coupe launch some months ago, I had opportunity to experience the subtle superiority of the M3, but it’s not really all that much better unless you want to play at track day. The IS F is more about the engine and transmission, the solidity of the body build, the ability to eat miles at high speeds and not get tired. It doesn’t have the final element of balance the M3 has, but I doubt many owners would know the difference.
Assuming an owner planned to live with the car day-to-day, touring with it on business trips or weekend pleasure trips, the Lexus build quality, reliability and service would outweigh any subtle differences in feel and responsiveness. Yes, the M3 is that slight touch more a holistic triumph when pressed hard, but other than BMW fanatics like our tech guru, an avid track day participant with the BMW Club of Portland, who cares?
When you’re lucky enough to reach cars of this level, you realize most of them are excellent machines, with subtle, rich differences to best suit your needs, made each year in very small numbers. IS F or M3, each is like the latest Pinot from Aston or Sea Smoke, rare and wonderful. IS F has its own brand of performance, carefully tailored to everyday life, yet with a retuned suspension that brings poise and balance on drop-away mountain corners that would put Plebian cars in a guard rail. Sure, there’s that hint of body weight at the rear when really cooking through a medium-speed corner, but that’s the only time you’ll ever sense it. In everyday point-it-and-punch-it driving of coastal California, from Ventura to San Diego, you’ll never catch a whiff of that minor issue.
Another point? Much as I loved the BMW 1M Coupe, and did not object at all to its turbo motor, lifted from the top-spec Z4, the next M3 will have a similar such turbo motor. Great power, efficient, loads of torque. But when you spend a few days traveling in a car with a brilliant naturally aspirated big-bore engine, you’re reminded of the definition of special. The current M3 has a gorgeous motor; it takes little effort for me to recall the sound of it passing on the front straight at Willow Springs. Munich’s finest will likely create a special turbo motor for the M3. But the Lexus IS F V8 is spectacular in all the ways you want an engine to be spectacular.
IS F is smooth, refined, absolutely perfect for a week of travel, yet its phenomenal engine, butter-smooth eight-speed and competent suspension let you steam past lesser mortals whenever and wherever you like.
This is an older video, from the original launch. But the sounds are accurate.
