- Popular Twitch streamer Fuslie and 554,000 unique viewers crowdsourced customizations to this 2021 Lexus IS350 F Sport to transform it into a high-performance custom gaming PC.
- Viewers on Twitch voted to choose the theme of the exterior, interior, gaming hardware, and even which refreshment to fill the six-drink center console cooler with.
- Fabrication work was completed by SCPS in Southern California, the same production studio that built concepts and movie props for Spider-Man: Homecoming and costume pieces for Avengers: Endgame.
Over half a million Twitch viewers voted to decide how funky the internet should make a 311-hp Lexus IS F Sport. Popular Twitch streamer Leslie, better known as Fuslie to her 762,000 followers, chose between several themes and hardware options provided by Lexus to create an IS F Sport with a 27-inch 4K display in the passenger seat, connected to a high-performance gaming PC in the trunk.
A team of 20 fabricators at the SCPS production studio used 3D printers, artists, structural engineers, and computer techs to bring this crowdsourced IS350 F Sport from concept to completion in five months. The outside of the IS350 F Sport is wrapped in vinyl, with a design that’s supposed to represent some Special Operations/Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six type of stuff. The dark colors and geometric shapes are meant to illustrate a stealthy first-person gaming experience. Below are other options viewers had to choose from.
The guts of the car look a lot like the inside of most modern PC cases and other computer hardware. It’s been filled with a bunch of RGB LED lighting, including programmable ceiling tiles that are crazier than the starlight headliner Rolls-Royce put in its Ghost Zenith models. The 27-inch Samsung 4K curved display is big enough that Lexus told us it doesn’t suggest people drive this particular IS350 F Sport on the open road because its mass blocks forward visibility.
A retractable keyboard and mouse are also onboard, as well as a 3D-printed controller for less than serious gamers. The passenger seat uses haptic feedback technology that lets you feel the gameplay. There’s also Smart Tint film on the windows that can darken the cabin on command to cut back on glare while you game.
The added computer power is enough to handle everything from Goat Simulator to Call of Duty Warzone at 4K resolution. Viewers elected the hardware package that included an AMD Ryzen 9 590X processor, an MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. That graphics card was out of stock during fabrication, so SCPS had to use an MSI GeForce RTX 2080 card instead. Unfortunately, the Lexus IS350 F Sport doesn’t power the system. Lexus explained that a wall outlet is required, because it’s obviously a giant waste of gasoline to sit in the driveway while the car idles just so you can rant on Twitter and watch Engineering Explained on YouTube until 3 a.m. every night.
The Lexus IS received styling updates for 2021, with a better infotainment system and more driver-assistance features, but we’re glad they featured the rear-drive F Sport for this partnership, because it has bigger wheels, more aggressive styling, and a peppier V-6. When we tested the 2021 IS350 F Sport last year, we found its interior comfy but felt the powertrain could be more exciting with forced induction.
The trend of automakers partnering with Twitch has become popular recently. Honda debuted its 2022 Honda Civic concept live on Twitch in November 2020 just before jumping back into Esports gameplay from Rocket League.
According to TwitchTracker.com, the livestreaming platform reached 2.9 million average concurrent viewers this month, with total hours viewed reaching over 2.1 billion hours in January. In other words, it’s like a small Super Bowl every day in terms of viewership. Although this year’s Super Bowl caught 96.4 million viewers for its roughly four-hour football game, nearly 15 million people watch Twitch per day.
If you want to watch Fuslie and the Twitch community design the car step by step, you can find the stream below:
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Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
