Rev up that Lexus engine, but be sure to hide your flute!

“The glass is actually broken by the precision sound of the vehicle. We wanted to show just how deep our pursuit of perfection and commitment to innovation goes. The LFA was designed to deliver it’s own unique exhaust note, and this illustrates that beautifully.” I bet you can guess what Vice President of Marketing for Lexus, Dave Nordstrom was referring to when he said those words. If you watch TV you have probably seen it a couple times, it’s Lexus’s new commercial for the 552-horespower LFA supercar that shatters a champagne flute with the sound of just the exhaust without the use of CGI or camera tricks.

In the commercial you see the Lexus LFA sitting in a an audio studio next to a Champagne flute, then you see a finger press the engine start button on the steering wheel, and then the rear wheels start spinning on the dynamometer. Then the engine gets louder and louder, the speedometer clicks past 150, 160, 170mph. Then the glass shakes a bit then shatters in slow motion. Lexus headquarters tells the Chicago Lexus RX dealer that to get the champagne flute to shatter like that they worked with an engineer to figure out what champagne glasses haves the same frequency as the LFA’s V10 engine that was made to output a sound that is different from any other car that is on the road today. The LFA’s signature sound comes from enhancing the secondary combustion frequency of the engine and then introducing primary, secondary, and tertiary firing harmonics.

In order to get the glass to shatter for the commercial, the pitch of the glass needed to match the pitch of the engine perfectly. To get it to match perfectly Lexus headquarters tells the Chicago used Lexus dealer that they had Lexus racecar driver Scott Pruett “drive” on the dynamometer until the engine revved to 7,000-9,000 rpm to create the right frequency of vibration to break the glass. They shot the commercial in a sound studio that used an amplifier that was positioned behind the exhaust and a speaker.

This may be the first time you have seen anything like this from Lexus, but Lexus headquarters tells the Chicago used Lexus dealer that this is the third commercial which Lexus uses glasses to show the unique sound of their vehicles engine.  The first time was in 1989 in which Lexus stacked a pyramid of Champagne glasses on the hood of a running LS Sedan and the second time was in 2006 in which they showed an LS 460 using it’s park-assist to parallel park between two champagne glasses.

If you want more information about the Lexus LFA or any other Lexus models check out your  Chicago Lexus RX dealer.