The Unexpected Spicy-Hot Lexus Sriracha IS 350 Explained

A few years back Akio Toyoda had enough. Enough of reading in fan-boy car magazines that his company’s cars were boring. He let his team know that going forward he wanted cars that stirred emotions. Shortly after that, the Lexus IS 350 defeated the comparable BMW 3 Series in a head to head comparison by a respected enthusiast magazine. And then another. Beating BMW at their own game was fun in a way.

The newest way to have some fun with the Lexus IS series is to build one using everyone’s favorite hot sauce. Rather than just a wrap and some after market parts, Lexus says it molded the hot sauce into the steering wheel resin. It poured hot sauce into the paint. Put the Sriracha logo (Which looks a little like the Los Pollos Hermanos logo from Gus’s company in Breaking Bad) into the headrests. Did they really put it the paint and resin? Who cares? It looks like they did.

Then Lexus made a fun video, shown below, and drove the Sriracha IS over to the Los Angeles Auto Show. Is this what Lexus IS owners (I was one) and fans want in a Lexus? Not really, but as long as Lexus and Toyota are trying to wring out the boring, nobody is complaining.