Straight six power. An optional manual transmission. Rear-wheel drive and peerless build quality. These are all qualities I completely ignored for years, while I dismissed the original Lexus SC300.

To me, the SC300 was always too big, too heavy, too blobby to ever be a car I really liked. The original styling was meant to be as smooth as possible, and is maybe the most ‘90s looking car for the decade, short of maybe the Suzuki X-90. The thing is, I grew up in the ‘90s. I didn’t like ‘90s when I was growing up. I longed for sharper lines and smaller cars. Alfa Romeos. That kind of thing.

In the years in between, I have realized one thing: I was (and usually remain to be) a complete idiot.

The turning point was really a different Lexus, . It was a six-cylinder manual of the same era, only with a weaker V6 and front-wheel drive.

Every so often I wake up and remember that I once bought a Lexus for $600, fixed it up, then almost

Still, it was a gem of a car, overpowered and invisible. Imagining it, but with an even sturdier engine and its power sent into the burnout zone, was tantalizing.

I had a line on one, remembering when I heard that was selling his SC300 missile car, but that thing got sold to someone else before I made any bad financial decisions.

Without anyone noticing, Formula Drift cars became quite possibly the most powerful racers of their

I’ve always wondered what if.

blew up a hundred times, and your R154 transmission was hugely expensive to replace. Hopefully. Then I won’t feel so bad.

“Two-jay-zee engine, no shit... This will decimate all,” Jesse said in the original Fast and…

So if you’ve owned one let us know how it was! Write your experience in the comments below, and be sure to include a picture of the car if you’ve got it. Hell, if you had an SC400 with the legendary 1UZ quad-cam V8, or maybe even a much-maligned SC430, I want to hear about it. Maybe then I’ll stop staring at for-sale listings in my idle hours.

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