Lexus SC

This is the catalogue record of the Lexus SC, one of 72 models Lexus has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1991. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Lexus SC properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Volvo Cars Volvo 850, the Opel Opel Astra, the Dodge Dodge Viper — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Lexus SC reads like this: the record lists its engine as 3.0 L Toyota JZ engine#2JZ / 2JZ-GE Straight-six engine / I6 (SC 300) / 4.0 L Toyota UZ engine#1UZ-FE / 1UZ-FE V8 engine / V8 (SC 400); kerb weight is recorded at 3485 lb (1992 SC 300 manual) / 3505 lb (1992 SC 300 automatic) / 3604 lb (1992 SC 400); drive goes through 4-speed Toyota A transmission#A340E .2830-40LE.29 / A340E (1992–00 SC 300, 1992–97 SC 400) / Toyota A transmission#A341E .2830-41LE.29 / A341E (1992-99 SC 400 GT-L) Automatic trans; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Lexus story

Within Lexus's own catalogue the Lexus SC sits alongside the Lexus ES (V20), the Lexus GS 450h (2012), the Lexus IS 200 (GXE10), the Lexus LS 400. The record names the Toyota Soarer (Z20) as its predecessor and the Lexus LC as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Erwin Lui and Dennis Campbell (1988–1989). Assembly is recorded at Japan: Susono, Shizuoka (Higashi Fuji plant); / Japan: Toyota, Aichi (Motomachi plant).

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Lexus SC was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.