By now, we should all be familiar with Toyota Motor's (TM, news, msgs) woes. No sooner had the automaker finally ascended to the No. 1 global spot, displacing General Motors (MTLQQ, news, msgs), now known as Motors Liquidation, than it began to hit speed bumps and potholes. There were historic financial losses, lawsuits and embarrassing, tragic recalls. At one point, it was widely believed that Toyota could do no wrong. All of a sudden, it could do no right.
So the Tokyo Motor Show, by all rights, should have been an opportunity for Toyota to redeem itself in its own backyard. Along with Honda Motor (HMC, news, msgs) and Nissan Motor (NSANY, news, msgs), Japan's two other big carmakers, Toyota had the place to itself. The grim story of the Tokyo show, traditionally a forum for rollouts of exotic concept cars, was that few international automakers would be spending the money to make the trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Still, there was the usual peppy, multicolored, futuristic zaniness that is the TMS. Unfortunately, Toyota did little to redeem itself in the face of its recent troubles. Instead, the company made the decision to use the Tokyo show to showcase something that's arguably the last thing that Toyota needs right now: a 500- to 600-horsepower supercar, designed to match wheels with Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
It's called the LFA, and Toyota has badged it -- and I'm not kidding here -- as a Lexus. That's right, the preferred brand of Midwestern dentists and junior-grade Hollywood agents will no longer be limited to lushly quiet luxury sedans and mellow crossover SUVs for the soccer moms of northeastern New Jersey.
Now Lexus will have a V-10 powered, two-door rocket sled that can tackle Germany's famous Nurburgring test track in less than eight minutes. The car blogs have been agog over this impressive piece of mega-car for a while now, but the Tokyo show provided the opportunity to consider the LFA in granular detail.
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It's the pet project of Akio Toyoda, grandson of Toyota's founder and, as of earlier this year, the company's president. It was rumored that the LFA would be put on hold for a while, given the global financial crisis, some needed performance tweaks, the auto industry meltdown and the fact that it will sell for close to $400,000. But Toyoda, who has a jones for speed and apparently doesn't fully embrace the idea that Toyota should be best-known for building the greatest 4-cylinder, 170-horsepower family sedan on Earth, felt otherwise.
An obvious complaint emerges: If Toyota can't even engineer a safe and functional floor mat, what in the world is it doing proclaiming itself a player in the highly esoteric supercar market? Most years, the LFA would come off as a flamboyant sideshow, a little catnip for the fanboys and ultra-enthusiasts, a salvo fired in the general direction of Maranello, Italy, and Ferrari's prancing stallion. This year, with the auto industry experiencing its worst sales in decades, the LFA looks more like a grand folly, the kind of arrogant gesture made by a car company that has lost its way.
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OK, the LFA is, by all preliminary accounts, a spectacularly good machine. But really, that's to be expected. It's not as if anyone would imagine Toyota building a bad supercar. The issue is: Why would Toyota choose this moment to show the world what it's been cooking up in its automotive labs?
This is a conservative organization that has methodically become the carmaker everyone trusts, the carmaker whose management and manufacturing practices all others are supposed to aspire to. And yet the takeaway from the Tokyo Motor Show is that Toyota has focused heart and head on the very definition of a niche product.
The LFA probably was supposed to rescue the Tokyo Motor Show, at some level, so Toyota can at least be given credit for that. But if the automaker's luck doesn't change, further spectacles like this are only going to provide more fuel to the new Toyota doubters. There are still plenty of car shows left this year and next to change the message. But for the moment, Toyota looks as if it is jumping the shark.
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