So armed with the experience in hard-top technology, the guys at Lexus decided to have another go at the lucrative segment, this time aiming a little below where the SC was placed, in BMW 325i territory.

We’ve seen that particular Bavarian time and time again on our roads, with its folding hard-top that completes its dramatic performance in 25 seconds, making for an envious audience at the traffic light stop and a nervous driver behind the button hoping it’ll end before the lights turn green. That’s, of course, if you haven’t rewarded yourself with the IS-C yet.

A little introduction to the IS-C

The IS-C, as most of you would have guessed by now, is based on the same platform as the sales-figure swelling IS sedan, bought mostly by businessmen, bankers and anyone else in their mid-thirties with a similar level of financial stability and a young family.

So you’ve got the same muscular facial panels as with the sedan and it’s at the A-pillars where all those similarities end. Beyond that you’ve got a longer door panel, a totally revised rear that looks like it got lifted off a Toyota Camry and a three-piece folding roof that looks just a tad weird from the side when up. The new car even adopts the same crease that runs from the top corner of the front headlamps, on top of the door handles and ends off at the tip of the rear lights. Not the best looking coupe-cabrio around it has to be said.

The inside layout of the IS-C is predictably identical to that of its sedan sibling. The luxurious leather seats cradles your body slightly into your desired spot while you get into your comfortable driving position behind the wheel.

Only electronic steering wheel adjusters on the left side of the rack will suffice in such a vehicle. You’re then greeted by a familiar and well laid out dashboard starting with the middle section where the audio unit and the various other controls are housed in an uncluttered manner with the buttons feeling tact and secure to the touch.

Directly in front of the driver, the car’s vital information is displayed through one of the nicest gauge clusters in the business, dual off-white gauges with the trip and gear displays smack in the middle.

It also has those very comfortable and highly adjustable driver and front passenger seats and a cozy rear seating space just enough for two average sized adults. Note I said cozy and not spacious.

This iteration of the IS family has a folding hard-top you must remember. So in an effort to afford the extra metal pieces the space, the rear seating had to be shifted a little more to the front to accommodate the new additions to the boot. Don’t expect roominess as in the sedan, I’ve had fellow passengers (a.k.a friends) tell me they felt pretty cramped at the back, mainly because of the narrower shoulder space.

But is seating more of a comfort than a criterion when buying such a lifestyle vehicle? Sure they’ll come in handy when chauffeuring friends around but realistically it will be driven on a daily basis by one person and a passenger and with the top up of course.  The next issue up for discussion is the boot space. As with most folding hard-top’s, the bootspace is nothing you can possibly boast about when the tops folded neatly in the trunk.

No golf bag to be optimistically squeezed in here, let alone your weekly groceries. With the top up on the other hand, the space in the boot manages to swallow 583 litres of cargo which shadows the Beemer’s 350 litre limit.

How’s it to drive?

With the same 2.5-litre V6 sitting under the bonnet, coupled with the 130kg weight gain, the IS-C manages to get up to 100 km/h in nine seconds. With 205bhp and 252Nm of torque on tap, this coupe still manages to move but acceleration off the line feels more sluggish than composed.

Thankfully the redeeming qualities that have always seen Lexus’s of past through are its magic carpet ride and its superior sound insulation.

With a double wishbone suspension in front and a multi-link setup in the rear, the IS-C merely floats over the imperfections on the roads and even going over humps at a higher than usual speed is absorbed for that controlled floating effect. Steering paired with the silky smooth six-speeder is a joy to handle. In a luxury item such as this, you’d expect effortless driving but at the same time enough feedback and control to steer the car in when a need for immediate reaction and steering is called for, and that’s exactly what you get.

For the manual over-ride, you’ve got pedal shifters behind the steering wheel that I’m quite certain buyers won’t bother using.

Not much point if you’re thinking of revving the life out of the engine though. The power band ends off pretty much at 5,000rpm and if you continue with weighting down the throttle, you will only be met with the 24-valve DOHC engine screaming back at you, and disappointment.

Taking the car through the obligatory tango of corners yields the usual suspect, body roll. Surely nothing surprising but what is, is the fact that that IS platform seems to have lost little of its rigidity with the top up when through the corners.

A small issue I had with the car was the braking. They dropped the same one from the sedan into the IS-C but I don’t think they realised that with the added weight, the car would need more effort and time to come to a halt. So you’ll find yourself stepping on it a little more than you should be normally.

Why the IS-C will make you want to drive topless

Don’t worry, you’ll still be wearing your polo shirt, the car on the other hand will be the one bearing its chest instead. And for one very simple reason.

The line it cuts without the metal pieces up is a much more flattering one, and it takes away the car’s bulky image, just like how if you’re on the larger side in respect to your frame, you should always avoid horizontal lines.

Driving becomes somewhat more of a stylish experience. Imagine yourself with your Prada shades, cyan Ralph Lauren Polo tee with the radio on loud and the windows down on the way to Sentosa to meet up with some friends. Life would be a peach.

But certain issues do crop up, like how the engine seems to be more sedated in moving the IS-C, how rear vision is still impaired even with the rear head rests collapsed, how it's a pain to reach extensively behind to grab your seatbelt (the Germans have automated ones) and how the car just looks a tad weird with the roof up. It even comes with some out-of-placed sporty aluminium pedals that try hard to add some sportiness back into this car.

But what the IS-C really does is offer you a chance to enjoy both facets of your life, the serious and the fun. Serious in unrivalled travelling comfort to and from the office and fun with the top down over bright sunny weekends.

Couple that with Lexus mainstays like auto headlamps, auto rain sensors, reverse sensors and a sound system that matches its volume to the top being up or down, this car, despite its short comings, has a lengthy buyers list to stand testament to how well the car seem to be serving it's younger, more affluent market segment here in Singapore.