Influx of future Japanese sports cars
Discussion
I'd love it if that were the case, but sadly I don't expect it.
The GR Yaris represents Toyota choosing to invest a lot of money in a niche product, not in expectation of Porsche-like profit margins but as an investment in building the brand, leveraging the WRC connection. It's a success in its own terms, somewhat akin to the LFA, but not something likely to see rivals rushing to cash in on the lucrative business opportunity Toyota has discovered.
The 400Z is coming but not coming to Europe. Nissan is somewhat leaderless due to the whole Ghosn/Renault affair, if we're lucky we'll get an R36 GTR but I'd not expect more.
Mitsubishi is on the endangered species list and is v likely pulling out of Europe, I can't see them investing in an Evo XI. It's much harder when you have to build up a product line from scratch than merely creating a new iteration - they'd need to create a powertrain, sports suspension etc, establish suitable dealers and promotion etc from scratch.
Honda seem happy with their well-received Civic Type R; the S2000 was a real one-off for them. Withdrawing from F1 to focus on sustainable mobility hardly suggests an appetite for another roadster. Mazda showed the RX-Vision concept a while back but they're in trouble lately and rotary sports car talk has gone quiet.
All these companies are faced with urgent business-critical challenges - to meet EU CO2 limits in 2021, 2022 and beyond, and to blend that into a 100% zero emission future - most of them have zero or one EVs in their range today. On top of this is the need to master software development to keep up with customer expectations for infotainment and dashboards, very tricky for large hierarchical manufacturing businesses. Beyond that they need to invest in self-driving to avoid the risk of being left high and dry by progress, and wrestle with how car-sharing could affect their business model.
That's a huge amount of unavoidable, business-threatening challenges to wrestle with, leaving capacity to create new sports cars looking quite unlikely.
I mean, if Mazda want to put the RX-Vision into production I'll be there to sign up right away, but that's not something I'm even hoping will actually happen.
samoht said:
I'd love it if that were the case, but sadly I don't expect it.
The GR Yaris represents Toyota choosing to invest a lot of money in a niche product, not in expectation of Porsche-like profit margins but as an investment in building the brand, leveraging the WRC connection. It's a success in its own terms, somewhat akin to the LFA, but not something likely to see rivals rushing to cash in on the lucrative business opportunity Toyota has discovered.
The 400Z is coming but not coming to Europe. Nissan is somewhat leaderless due to the whole Ghosn/Renault affair, if we're lucky we'll get an R36 GTR but I'd not expect more.
Mitsubishi is on the endangered species list and is v likely pulling out of Europe, I can't see them investing in an Evo XI. It's much harder when you have to build up a product line from scratch than merely creating a new iteration - they'd need to create a powertrain, sports suspension etc, establish suitable dealers and promotion etc from scratch.
Honda seem happy with their well-received Civic Type R; the S2000 was a real one-off for them. Withdrawing from F1 to focus on sustainable mobility hardly suggests an appetite for another roadster. Mazda showed the RX-Vision concept a while back but they're in trouble lately and rotary sports car talk has gone quiet.
All these companies are faced with urgent business-critical challenges - to meet EU CO2 limits in 2021, 2022 and beyond, and to blend that into a 100% zero emission future - most of them have zero or one EVs in their range today. On top of this is the need to master software development to keep up with customer expectations for infotainment and dashboards, very tricky for large hierarchical manufacturing businesses. Beyond that they need to invest in self-driving to avoid the risk of being left high and dry by progress, and wrestle with how car-sharing could affect their business model.
That's a huge amount of unavoidable, business-threatening challenges to wrestle with, leaving capacity to create new sports cars looking quite unlikely.
I mean, if Mazda want to put the RX-Vision into production I'll be there to sign up right away, but that's not something I'm even hoping will actually happen.
Truths do hurt.The GR Yaris represents Toyota choosing to invest a lot of money in a niche product, not in expectation of Porsche-like profit margins but as an investment in building the brand, leveraging the WRC connection. It's a success in its own terms, somewhat akin to the LFA, but not something likely to see rivals rushing to cash in on the lucrative business opportunity Toyota has discovered.
The 400Z is coming but not coming to Europe. Nissan is somewhat leaderless due to the whole Ghosn/Renault affair, if we're lucky we'll get an R36 GTR but I'd not expect more.
Mitsubishi is on the endangered species list and is v likely pulling out of Europe, I can't see them investing in an Evo XI. It's much harder when you have to build up a product line from scratch than merely creating a new iteration - they'd need to create a powertrain, sports suspension etc, establish suitable dealers and promotion etc from scratch.
Honda seem happy with their well-received Civic Type R; the S2000 was a real one-off for them. Withdrawing from F1 to focus on sustainable mobility hardly suggests an appetite for another roadster. Mazda showed the RX-Vision concept a while back but they're in trouble lately and rotary sports car talk has gone quiet.
All these companies are faced with urgent business-critical challenges - to meet EU CO2 limits in 2021, 2022 and beyond, and to blend that into a 100% zero emission future - most of them have zero or one EVs in their range today. On top of this is the need to master software development to keep up with customer expectations for infotainment and dashboards, very tricky for large hierarchical manufacturing businesses. Beyond that they need to invest in self-driving to avoid the risk of being left high and dry by progress, and wrestle with how car-sharing could affect their business model.
That's a huge amount of unavoidable, business-threatening challenges to wrestle with, leaving capacity to create new sports cars looking quite unlikely.
I mean, if Mazda want to put the RX-Vision into production I'll be there to sign up right away, but that's not something I'm even hoping will actually happen.
Toyota can sell the GR Yaris in Europe because the CO2 average across all of the cars they sell is low enough that they can afford to burn some hydrocarbons with their limited volume halo cars.
For the same reason, Toyota are also developing their new (non-hybrid) Aygo city car, whilst many other manufacturers are dropping their city cars because the business case for hybrid city cars doesn't stack up, and they don't have the CO2 budget to sell non-hybrid city cars. IMHO it's bad EU regulation..
The other Japanese manufacturers aren't so lucky, hence their recent scramble to introduce hybrid and fully electric vehicles, and to co-develop cars with Toyota and/or re-badge Toyota hybrids.
For the same reason, Toyota are also developing their new (non-hybrid) Aygo city car, whilst many other manufacturers are dropping their city cars because the business case for hybrid city cars doesn't stack up, and they don't have the CO2 budget to sell non-hybrid city cars. IMHO it's bad EU regulation..
The other Japanese manufacturers aren't so lucky, hence their recent scramble to introduce hybrid and fully electric vehicles, and to co-develop cars with Toyota and/or re-badge Toyota hybrids.
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