The Lexus IS300 Is "Supra Fun" and Supercar Rare on a Budget

Now, you've got a chance to own one of these legendary Lexus wagons. More on that in a moment. Let's first get something right before we get further into this story. The 2J is just an engine. For Toyota, it was a corporate workhorse that found its way into dozens of cars that aren't anywhere near as well-known or hallowed as the Supra. So by putting this engine into the IS300, Lexus was simply making a decision based on the powertrains found in the car's competition weighed against what Daddy Toyota had in the back room at the time.

With that out of the way, let's talk SportCross. Lexus wanted to capture a much younger demographic after the LS400's success with a much older crowd. This was the logic behind the IS300- built to compete with the BMW 3 Series at the time. Taking on the E46 3er was a tall order, but Lexus had killed giants before. Part of the recipe was a straight rip-off of BMW. Lexus offered RWD, a naturally aspirated straight-six, and a 5-speed manual transmission. Sound familiar?

Lexus did alright in those initial years following the IS300's introduction. It built plenty of them both here and in Japan from '98 until the new millennium. For the 2000 model year, the car was doing well enough to deserve a bit of an update, and along came the SportCross. Now, Lexus made embarrassingly few of these – just around 3,000 of these were sold here – the IS SportCross just wasn't a hot ticket item. Over in Europe, the Sport Cross was sold under the Altezza name and in somewhat greater numbers. Still, it turns out "the kids" didn't want a station wagon like mom had.

However, the result was something of a gearhead holy grail. Lexus, intending to compete with BMW, Audi, and others, built an N/A, RWD station wagon with a legendary powerplant. Of course, at the time, it was just another car. This leads us to the only real issues with the IS300. First, 215 horsepower from the 2JZ is nothing. Second, you'll never find one with the aforementioned 5-speed manual. All SportCross wagons were automatic.

It's a strange automatic as well. The shifter knob looks like it's more at home in a Lamborghini Murcielago, and you can shift "manually." There are buttons for downshifting on the wheel, and on the rear of the wheel, Lexus placed buttons for upshifting. It's an odd choice, and the idea of a paddle-shifted automatic was really limited to Formula 1 at this time. Seeing as this is a Lexus station wagon and not Schumacher's Ferrari, the choice was obvious. The auto guaranteed wider market appeal while giving a sort of consolation prize to enthusiasts.

In the end, the wagon lasted only a few years before poor sales killed it. However, the enthusiast community has kept these alive. Obviously, the 2JZ is an incredibly tunable engine. People have done just about everything under the sun to these, and in 2023, you'd be hard-pressed not to clear 350 horsepower with a few bolt-on modifications to the 2JZ-GE. The GTE, the turbocharged one, is capable of much more.

Still, solving the SportCross' biggest issue – its weak, slushy automatic transmission – takes some work. Changing the transmission is a huge job, and while you can find stick-swapped examples, these often feature heavy modifications on top of the new gearbox.

That's arguably what makes this IS300 SportCross such a rare opportunity. The one you're seeing photos of is largely unmolested. The owner tinted the windows, installed some new sway bars, and put some LEDs in the footwell. Other than that, the car is stock. What's more, this one has hilariously low mileage on it – just 59,100 miles. For cars so lauded by the enthusiast community, that's nothing.

Of course, there are some issues. Cosmetically, the car isn't perfect. The bumper is marred, and the car shows its age in some places. Still, I expect that this one will bring the money. How much, however, is really hard to say. See, normally, a really, really, nice IS300 SportCross is roughly $20,000. However, this one has its problems, as we've discussed. Despite that, the opportunity to own a 2JZ-powered station wagon doesn't come up every day.