The Street Fighter Lexus Is Real and Destined to Be Totaled

There’s a Street Fighter movie coming out in 11 days, at the time of writing, and you know how Hollywood is—they like their cross-promotional PR blasts. The thing is, the show-business machine has gotten our attention with this one, because The General (yeah) enlisted a builder to recreate the iconic Lexus LS400 from Street Fighter II’s bonus stage. Let’s just say it looks pixel-perfect.

Sort of like those wraps with heavy black outlines meant to evoke cars drawn for manga, this one’s got a very blocky texture, closely matching the sprite work of the source material. But what I really appreciate about this particular build, by Dennis McCarthy’s Vehicle Effects, is that they didn’t resign to letting the wrap do all the lifting.

Look closely, and you’ll notice that the grille surround protrudes from the front of the car, and boy is it also blocky, almost like Legos fixed to the face of the LS. The side mirrors are shaped in a similar way, as are the door handles. And it seems like functional headlights and turn signals might be lurking underneath removable, pixelated covers.

If you’ve never played Street Fighter II, first of all, get yourself to an arcade already. Second, the LS was the star of the game’s bonus stage, where it was your job, as Ryu, Chun-Li, Blanka, Cammy, or whoever your main was, to obliterate this executive sedan as mercilessly as possible in 40 seconds. The more gratuitous the vehicular violence, the more points you’d get, which would of course factor into your position on the leaderboard for gloating rights.

Street Fighter II wasn’t actually the first game to feature such a strange challenge; Final Fight, which also hails from the Capcom catalog, had a similar bonus stage and released about a year and a half earlier. As our friends at Japanese Nostalgic Car explain, the very unfortunate four-door in that instance was a Toyota Crown.

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition (World) (Arcade) – (Bonus Stages)

This LS was revealed at ComplexCon in Los Angeles. Aside from all the custom wrap and fabrication work, the Lexus was thoroughly reupholstered—with embroidered patterns in the headrests that read “YOU” and “WIN,” no less—and even features “a coin-slot change holder that works as a seat warmer.” That’s just clever. It’s actually being given away, too, along with a very specific cash prize of $25,400.69.

Congratulations to the eventual winner; we hope you enjoy your LS as much as possible until a muscle-bound mercenary or demon inevitably reduces it to scrap metal in under a minute. Look, you signed up for that risk when you entered the sweepstakes.

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