Akio Toyoda, the recently-installed president of Toyota , called himself “a car nut” and emphasized that, while the automaker won’t give up its mainstream mission, he’s excited about the company’s upcoming sports car.
“I am very excited about it and plan to fast-track it,” Toyoda said at the Center for Automotive Research’s annual Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Michigan. “I am passionate about driving and I race as well.”
Toyoda says that he hopes the new sports car, developed with Subaru , will appeal to younger buyers – likely in much the way the long-discontinued Celica and Supra did. Few details are known about the upcoming sports car.
Still, Toyoda says he won’t steer the automaker away from the products that made it the world’s largest automaker, even if it lost $4.3 billion last year after sales tumbled in many of its key markets.
“To help us recover, he’s really planning a back-to-basics approach,” Toyota Motor Sales USA president Jim Lentz told the Detroit News.
The upcoming sports car doesn’t mean that Toyota won’t continue its push for more efficient vehicles.
“We must do it in a way that is affordable to today’s customers,” Toyoda said. “In other words, we are back where we began 100 years ago – at a point where we must reinvent the automobile.”
