The Lexus LFA just got faster

The Lexus LFA is not dead. Well, sort of not dead. Though the ballistic supercar's production run of 500 ended in 2012, Gazoo Racing - in collaboration with Toyota - has built this: it's the Lexus LFA ‘Code X', unveiled at the Tokyo Auto Salon for one purpose only. Speed.

It's a one-off racing car built specifically to tackle this year's Nürburgring 24hr race, and features a few key alterations that has made TopGear.com sit up and take notice. Don't forget, the standard LFA was already the best car Jeremy has ever driven, complete with its 4.8-litre high-revving V10 engine.

This one then, gets a displacement increase to 5.3-litres, with power and torque "fine tuned to better suit the demands of the Nürburgring course," according to Lexus. No specifics have been provided, so we can only assume this extra displacement brings with it extra poweeerrr over the standard LFA's 552bhp (or 562bhp if you're talking about the special Nürburgring pack car).

It also gets a more rigid full carbon frame which should shave off some of the LFA's weight, meaning a 0-62mph sprint much, much quicker than the road car's 3.7 seconds.

You're probably not interested in the reasoning behind this one-off LFA racer because, well, it's a racing LFA. But, Lexus tells us it has been created as a research vehicle to test future sports car technologies, and will thus be closely monitoring the Code X's performance at the ‘Ring later this year. Gazoo will also field another LFA and Toyota GT86 as part of a three-car assault on the famous endurance race (pics 4 and 5, above).