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BMW M4 vs. Lexus RC F in Head 2 Head sports coupe showdown

It's the showdown everyone's been looking forward to, the East versus West grudge match of the year. We're talking, of course, about the BMW M4 versus the Lexus RC F.
Although BMW uses a twin-turbo straight-six and the Lexus uses a free-breathing V8, the two are pretty closely matched on paper: a luxury coupe with over 400 horsepower channeled to the rear wheels.
The BMW has been doing these cars for longer, and the M4 boasts a higher power-to-weight ratio. But then the RC F has more power - and without forced induction to break up the rev range. So which is the better luxury muscle coupe? Watch the latest episode of Motor Trend Head 2 Head to find out.

Lexus in no hurry to be a big player in China

For a while now, China's spiraling wealth, population and development has had the world's luxury automakers in an expansionist fervor, with many executives exhibiting the sort of gleefully maniacal behavior historically reserved for gold-rush prospectors. Yet Toyota, of all companies, is exercising a surprising amount of caution in the Asian nation.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, Toyota's premium brand, Lexus, sold all of 64,000 vehicles in China last year, while BMW cleared its books of 326,000. In fact, it didn't even bother entering the market until 2005, while rival Audi built its first car in the market a decade and a half earlier. Even now, Lexus doesn't build any vehicles in China, and with the country's notoriously high tariffs on imports, that's a major disadvantage. Yet the business daily quotes Lexus executive vice president Mark Templin as saying that the brand is nowhere near ready to start building cars in the market. "We're not having those discussions about when we're going to go to China... We have a lot of work to do before we get to that point."
Part of that work includes establishing a more expansive dealer network - Lexus only had 99 stores as of 2012, while rival Mercedes-Benz had over two-and-a-half times as many, and it's still expanding. Adding a lot of dealers without having a goodly number of competitively priced offerings for them to sell may seem like an odd strategy, but Templin tells the WSJ that the goal is to "cultivate our image for quality and customer service and let the customers that we have go tell that story for us."

2015 Lexus RC F leaked out ahead of upcoming debut?

Lexus has had a somewhat volatile relationship with coupes. The first-gen SC gave way to the bloated second-gen convertible, which itself went out of production three years ago. The LFA arrived the same year the SC departed, but awesome as it was, it's six-figure price tag and limited production put it well out of reach even for the brand's typical upscale customers. That left only the IS Convertible to hold down the two-door end of the lineup, but Lexus is keen to fill that void with the arrival of the upcoming RC.
Oft been spied and speculated, the RC has reportedly leaked out from Japan's Best Car magazine in tantalizing RC F spec - although with the increasing quality of renderings (and the graininess of the photos in question), we could be looking at an artist's impression. That will upgrade the base coupe's anticipated 3.5-liter V6 and 306 horsepower with a 5.0-liter V8 churning out 455 hp, along with more aggressive styling previewed by the LF-CC concept.
Signs point toward the RC serving as the coupe counterpart to the IS, while the IS Convertible is expected to carry on (either in current or facelifted form) on the outgoing model's platform. Look for a reveal at either the Tokyo Motor Show in November or the Detroit Auto Show in December.