The saying goes, “Auto racing was invented on the day they built the second car.” In that vein, the idea of the sporty hybrid was launched on the day a marketing team sat down with the second hybrid car ever introduced, attempting to foist the same realm of “sport-tuned suspensions” and “driver-focused dynamics” into its brochures. Lexus is foisting sportiness upon its entire lineup, and the 2013 GS450h hybrid is the latest. Using a cliched page from every automaker’s marketing textbook, Lexus of Italy issued a challenge: can the new Lexus hybrid sedan be sporty enough to raise pulses?
Lexus put some potential clients into a GS450h with a Frankenstein-looking test driver for a few tire-smoking, tail-dragging hot laps around an unnamed track. They also put heart rate monitors on the clients, with the challenge that only the stone coldest of foxes could maintain a heart rate below 120 beats per minute.
Lots of worried eyebrows and clenched teeth ensue from the array of middle-aged banker types that Lexus loves to court (and vice versa)—suggesting a level of adrenaline not experienced since Facebook’s IPO imploded.
Will these potential Lexus buyers keep their heartbeats below 120 bpm, preserving their physical intactness like some biological version of Speed? Can a Lexus truly raise pulses that high unless it, say, hits a patch of ice or gets cut off by another Lexus? Being frightened by a guy in a scary mask (again, Death Race 2000 comes to mind) can raise the heart rate as well, as well as the loving look of adoration the bald man in the Syracuse baseball jersey gives Frankenstein at 1:37. But the woman with the 195 bpm rate who screams “ma cavolo!” easily takes the cake. Better take a Dramamine, kids.
Source: Lexus, YouTube
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