The common thought is that Japanese car makers have been slow to develop and launch electric cars and they lag behind car makers in China and Europe in that regard.
There’s truth in that, although it’s not like the Japanese industry has been pumping out purely internal combustion engines while the rest of the world prepares to go electric. Japan’s development of hybrids is based on not only the belief that they have excellent real-world efficiency and run on electric power for a significant portion of their running anyway but also of Japan’s need to greatly consider whole-life emissions of cars due to having to import almost all of its energy.
The returning Tokyo motor show, reborn as the Japan Mobility Show, was the Japanese car industry’s way of showing that it can make electric cars with the best of them. Every major Japanese car maker put electric vehicles at the centre of their show stands but thankfully they were not all homogenised family crossover blobs like so many of the first wave of European EVs and they showed real creativity and variety in shape, size and car type, like Japan has always done so well.
Not only was this the show of the rise of the Japanese electric car but also the show of the returning Japanese sports car.
Any one of a reborn Mazda MX-5, Nissan GT-R or Toyota MR2 would have been enough to steal the show at any other major motor show but that all three were unveiled on the same morning at the same place gave the Japan Mobility Show a real blockbuster feel.
The Mazda Iconic SP concept was a real stunner, elegantly styled and beautifully proportioned. Mazda’s executives said it showed they had all the tools and know-how at their disposal to allow the MX-5 to live on in the electrified era as a rotary range-extended electric model should they wish to do so, and why wouldn’t they?
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Only the Subaru, in all Black paint and trim, with proper wheels might be a looker.
The rest, apprentice builds for a laugh and training purposes.
Wow... so many of those vehicles don't appeal to me in any way. What is it with all the ugly body shapes, silly looking wheels and oddball concepts...?
Couldn't agree more, and when you look closely at some of the 'features' like those wheels for example, or the completely pillarless/frameless windows on the Lexarse I can't see them entering production in that form for a while yet! The only thing I vaguely like if the Prelude and that may be because I had one 1991 model that I loved dearly and sorely miss