Lexus IS 500 F Sport Performance
Why 6.8: Lexus dropped the RC F's 472-hp V8 into the smaller IS shell at a moment when literally no other compact sport sedan still offered one — the German competition had gone turbo-four or turbo-six years earlier. Bought specifically for that fact, and driven the way a compact RWD sedan is supposed to be.
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Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €52k (2022) → €45k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
The long version
By the time this launched, every German compact sport sedan had gone turbocharged, and Lexus answered the question nobody was asking by stuffing the RC F's naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 into the smaller, lighter IS body — a genuinely odd, late-cycle move that reads like an engineering department getting one last swing before the platform aged out. Buyers who cross-shopped this against a 3 Series or C-Class specifically wanted the V8 and the redline, which means the ownership pool skews toward people who researched the engine before anything else about the car. It depreciates like an ordinary compact luxury sedan rather than holding any collector premium, because there is no speculative story here yet — just a sedan with an unusually good engine for its price bracket. What's on the road gets used as a daily sport sedan, exactly as intended, with none of the garage-queen behavior that shows up around genuinely rare cars.