Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Bread
Toyoda won just how many F1 races? Or LeMans? They'll remain boring cars pretty much forever. One cool motor isn't exactly heritage.
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Ummm ... read your racing history, Particularly recently: A Yaris just won the World Rally Championship (and rumor has it that a "hot hatch" Yaris to commemorate it is imminent), and it competes with Ford and Chevy at all levels of NASCAR. And what about the TS050 WEC Le Mans racer?
Toyota's got plenty of racing heritage for its age (barely 40 years). Not Honda or [insert Italian carmaker here] levels of plenty, but Toyota's philosophy has never been to race just for the sake of racing. It's basically been treated as a tool for product research and development -- and Akio Toyoda being at the helm will not change that because it's been a tenet of Toyota's philosophy since soon after the company's founding.
What
will change under Akio will be the performance level of consumer cars, as well as the pace and frequency with which Toyota involves itself in racing -- at more levels and of more types -- to develop its consumer products. He's all but said this, multiple times.