In the same way that you don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight, you don't want to show up at the Nürburgring with some floppy old commuter car.

There are parts of this storied circuit that can and should scare the bejesus out of almost any sane human behind a wheel. And when we say Nürburgring, we don't mean the new, safe, runoff-happy GP 'Ring, the one where you could go straight at the end of the straight and the worst thing that would happen is embarrassment as you slowly dug deeper into the gravel trap or slid around on the plentiful grass like a drunken frat boy piloting a golf cart on the links with his bros.

No, we are talking about the old, original 'Ring, the Nordschliefe, the one made in the 1920s with skinny pavement, almost no runoff area and parts so remote they won't necessarily ever even find you when you commit your last big screwup. This 'Ring was built when men were men and death--much more so than in modern times--was a part of everyday life, certainly a part of racing.

So when we showed up at the 'Ring, all suited up in Nomex from head to toe and all the way out to the fingertips, we came prepared—with a Lexus LFA.

Yes the LFA, the car that has been shown in one "concept" form or another for what seems like forever. It was first shown at Detroit in 2005 and has been trotted out in various guises at car shows since. They even raced LFAs twice, at the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2008 and 2009. So everybody knows it works well and can get around this track fairly quickly.

But Lexus has never let just any average driving schmo like us behind the wheel, certainly not here at the Nordschliefe. Until now.

Fast and predictable
What was it like to drive? It is fast, for sure, quick off the line and quick in passing. But it also is remarkably stable and predictable. You can't say that about all supercars.

Let's start with the basics. Its 3,256 pounds of curb weight are rocketed off the line by a 554-hp dry-sump V10 that'll take it from 0 to 62 mph in just 3.7 seconds. Top speed is a hearty and wailful 204 mph.

Yes, 204 mph! We were on our way to that speed earlier in the day on the autobahn but ran out of room. Instead of 204, we topped out at "only" 172 mph. The remarkable thing about piloting the LFA at that speed was its stability. The engine is longitudinally mounted in front and it drives the rear wheels through a torque tube, rear-mounted six-speed ASG automated sequential gearbox and a limited-slip differential. While the balance is 48/52, putting the weight out on the ends of the structure as opposed to gathering it all in the middle gives it a lower polar moment. It will tend, in general, to not spin around as quickly as a rear-engine Porsche or a mid-engine Spyker, Ferrari or Audi R8 5.2 V10.

"In our religious philosophy we say, 'As long as you are in the hand of the Buddha you are safe,' " is how chief engineer Haruhiko Tanahashi described putting the weight out at the ends of the car for better inherent stability. "You can have the best pleasure, but you are safe."

We hear ya on that religious experience.

If you lift off too quickly in a turn, the stability control will catch you first, but it does not do so intrusively. At speed on the track, it gently reduces throttle, so gently you usually don't notice it. Or maybe we were just being smoothly cautious. More-confident drivers can turn stability all the way off for a more fluid drive. But you are always in the hand of the Buddha.

The power of lightness
The LFA performs so well in part because of its unique body structure, which consists of a carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic monocoque with aluminum extrusions front and rear. Combined with an aluminum engine, it is what engineers call "light." The rear-drive LFA is almost 600 pounds lighter than the AWD Nissan GT-R and also is lighter than the Porsche 911 Turbo, the Audi R8 V10 and the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1.

Thus the brakes don't have to work as hard. But they work hard nonetheless. On our autobahn top-speed runs earlier in the day, the LFA was so safe and stable that we never felt threatened by anything, not even the pinhead in the Škoda who wandered into our lane to leisurely pass a truck—this was when we were doing about one Euro 50. The 390-millimeter front and 360-millimeter rear ceramic disc brakes barely warmed up as they brought the whole LFA down to the lumbering rate of the moronic Škoda driver.

Getting back up to speed, the column-mounted paddles click up through the six-speed ASG gearbox remarkably fast. Shifts can come as quickly as 0.2 second in Sport mode, about as fast as any gearbox made, but they aren't at all brutal. Auto, Normal and Wet modes make up your other shift choices. Each mode has its own programming. You can even select shift speeds, ranging from the 0.2-second blasts to shifts that take a full and leisurely 1 second.

The lightweight chassis is connected to the wheels by double wishbones in front and a rear multilink. Tires are Bridgestone 265/35ZR-20s in front and 305/30ZR-20s in the rear. The suspension was not just developed at the Nürburgring, as seemingly everything is nowadays, but during the Nürburgring 24-hour race. The shocks on the production car are the same ones used in the race. When engineers and drivers noticed some slight chassis flex in the races, Tanahashi-san added front and rear crossbraces connected by a latticelike central brace and two more carbon-fiber braces in the front structure.