Akio Toyoda, the chairman of Toyota, is living proof that some corporate suits actually have a soul. While most CEOs spend their weekends analyzing spreadsheets or looking for golf balls, the 79-year-old “master driver” was recently spotted at Fuji Speedway, reminding the world that his blood flows with 93-octane gasoline.
During a test drive event, Toyoda shared a candid confession with a young engineer that probably gave the company’s accountants a collective heart attack: “If we built only what I liked, they’d all be GR Corollas and GR Yarises“.
Imagine a glorious, albeit financially precarious, utopia where your local dealership is a sea of aggressive, uncompromising hot hatches instead of a beige ocean of commuter pods. While he didn’t explicitly mention the Supra or the 86 in this specific breath, the fact that Gazoo Racing has been elevated to a permanent performance sub-brand proves Toyoda isn’t just joking. Rumors are already swirling about a resurrected Celica, a car that US dealers have reportedly seen behind closed doors, suggesting the sports car flame is being fanned by the man at the very top.
The “cool boss” energy hit a bit of a reality check, however, when a brave young engineer mentioned his dream of building a new hypercar to follow the legendary LFA and its screaming V10. Toyoda’s response was a classic “go for it” pep talk, urging the kid to find like-minded rebels to make it happen. But the actual LFA successor currently being cooked up by Lexus is a silent, fully electric supercar.
He famously defined a sports car as something with the “smell of gasoline and a loud engine,” a sentiment that makes the impending arrival of the electric FT-Se (the rumored electric MR2 successor) feel like a bittersweet compromise.
The cold, hard truth is that Toyota cannot survive on drift-ready niche toys alone. The RAV4 and the Camry remain the “boring” bread and butter that fund Toyoda’s high-revving hobbies. These halo models may not sell in stratospheric numbers, but they serve as the ultimate brand-building Botox, preventing Toyota from sagging into a terminal case of “anonymous SUV syndrome”.
