Motoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guides

Bring on the holographic displays, flying cars, future-punk booth babes and the dancing fembots. Not!

By Shahzad Sheikh

I was pretty excited to finally get a chance to visit the Tokyo Motor Show as part of a trip with Honda Middle East (read about my trip to their R&D facility here). In fact you can see just how excited from this picture courtesy of our friends at Saudi Auto. I’ve done a few major international Motor Shows in my time, but considering that Japan is a mesmerising country full of the unrestrained extraordinary somehow fused with ritualistic tradition, this one, I assumed, would be rather special and very different.

Japan loves robots, anime, girls in short skirts, technology, drifting and the future – it embraces and utilises science that the rest of us haven’t even thought about, in ways that we can barely comprehend, usually presented eye-popping manner usually due to the quite unique cultural idiosyncrasies of that place – just do a search for weird Japanese inventions!

So was it unreasonable to expect quirky and bizarre combined with amazing and fantastical for my first visit to the Tokyo show? Hmmm…

Well what I actually got was… just another Motor Show. And not a particularly engaging one either. Relatively speaking, when put into the context of where-in-the-world-are-we, the recent Dubai Motor Show was more entertaining and interesting.

And what was really quite astonishing, verging on somewhat pathetic, was the Japanese car industry’s combined cry that it really, really was enthused and excited about its cars, and that it wanted them to be fun again and that we should all be ecstatic too.

The fact that young people all over the world, but particularly in Japan (as much as 80%) are turning away from the prospect of even driving cars, never mind owning one, has clearly got the industry there very concerned indeed. Desperate even.

Every speech, not just at the show but also at the JAMA (Japanese Automotive Manufacturer Association) conference the night before, seemed to be focussing on how fun, funky and cool cars were, and that young people really should get tremendously thrilled by them. They simply must.

But instead of a bullish call-to-action, all of this posturing came across as a whimpering cry for attention. And the reason for that was the lack of conviction played out in terms of actual energy, excitement, engagement and real new products. Don’t stand up and TELL us how great your cars are, SHOW us. Make the cars come alive, and make us fall in love.

And as an illustration of what I’m on about, the most significant actual new product launches at the Tokyo Motor Show were the Porsche Macan, the new, new, new Mini (sic), Jaguar’s F-Type Coupe and BMW’s 4 Series convertible. Notice a trend there? Yep – they were all European! The Japanese showed plenty of tentative concepts but no actual new cars. Talk about insecurity.

Add this to the fact that the whole thing was just like any other show – ie, cars on stands with smiling but uninterested dolly-birds handing out gumpf, and no spectacular displays or presentations whatsoever – it all left me more than a little underwhelmed.

But perhaps I’m being a little blinkered. Let’s take five here. Breath…

After all the big three did have loads of interesting… er… concepts at Tokyo. So let’s start then with Honda, well they did fly me over there after all.

I saw first saw the NSX in the flesh in Frankfurt and here it was again in white. Each time I see it, I fall for it even more, and really can wait to see the production car, let alone drive it! Ooo… giddy am I!

But the little S660 is even more interesting, because it’s a replacement for cars like the original Honda Beat micro sports-car and, in the absence of anything else, sporty roadster like the S2000. Plus it will be accessible, attainable.

Although actually it won’t. At least not for us in the region. We’re more likely to see the sub-CR-V crossover Vezel, though perhaps not even that as it just be JDM only, though it would undoubtedly sell here. Even so, it’s nothing to get the old VTEC veins pumping.

Having said that there was plenty to get VTEC excited about, like the new Turbo engines and the next Type-R (I drove it, read about it here), but in the meantime, here’s what I need you all to do: write an earnest letter to Honda Middle East, demanding that they bring the S660 to our market!

Toyota and Lexus had about four major concepts on display. We’ll start with the latter – the RC300h coupe. I kept referring to it as an IS coupe, because from the front, thanks to its Nike tick LEDs, that’s what it looks like to me. But I keep being told that it’s actually a half-way house platform that sits between the IS and GS, so then this is a coupe in its own right. It did look good, and will be a BMW 4 series and Audi A5 rival.

Toyota left me a little confused with what looked like a London Taxi. Except that it wasn’t. But it’s most certainly inspired by it that’s for sure. Given that nearly all the taxis in Tokyo are Toyotas and, for that matter, nearly all the taxis in the UAE, are Toyotas, it’s not as laughable as it might first seem that the Japanese giant’s one-of-three major exhibits at its home show was a taxi. Still though, a taxi?!

Never mind, it may not be original but it’s rather appealing to my eyes (seeing as I am a Londoner) with good space and comfort. I think they should definitely build this, not just for the streets of Tokyo, but it would also be cool to see it replace the Camrys of Dubai. In addition to this there were a couple of fuel cell concepts, but I barely remember noticing them.

I did however notice the concepts on the Nissan stand – and not just because of the press conference presented by Carlos Ghosn himself – but because out of the big three local contingent, the concepts on this stand were the most intriguing.

Firstly of course that weird Blade Glider electric sports car concept which isn’t actually a three-wheeler even though it looks like one, but it is in fact a three seat, with the two passenger sitting to the sides and behind the driver. If it ever makes it to production this would be a fun ride, but it’s quite a unique, off-the-wall, vehicle.

There were rumours that Nissan would reveal a potential challenger to the successful Toyota 86 sports car. We weren’t disappointed because the IDx Freeflow, a sort of futuristic/retro version of an old Datsun 510 coupe with some influences perhaps from a classic Maserati Shamal was debuted. It certainly intrigued me, but the yellow paint job and challenging jagged edges, left me a little uncertain at first.

Then they revealed the Nismo version, which feature a more aggressively styled front end, and I was instantly smitten. With its side exhausts, riveted bulging wheel arches, roof blade and deep front scoop, not to mention the menacing wheels and old-skool race car livery, it was a car I just wanted to drive. And I think most others will too. In fact, Nissan should just build this, and bring it over here pronto – just don’t saddle it with a CVT gearbox for goodness sakes!

Faced with a sports car like this, I reckon even the yoof could be turned. There’s your solution then JAMA. Stop talking and start doing. Make these concepts real.

Oh and fembots. Always have fembots.