Japanese OEM manufactures and their in-house tuning arms commonly have a presence at TAS each year, as it’s the perfect opportunity to debut and display their latest OEM-modified offerings. The OEMs typically have a lot more capital to throw at their display booths compared with your typical tuning company so celebrity race-car drivers and engineers, large branded walls, gigantic illuminated logos, huge LCD screens as well as wide real estate footprints were common traits when I arrived at any of these elaborate booths. Those who compete in Super GT also had their GT500 and GT300-class monsters on display. For TAS 2017, all of the large Japanese manufactures made an appearance except notably, Mitsubishi.
I’ve raced the Super GT-Nismo GT-Rs countless times in Gran Turismo so was delighted to see the real McCoy at Nissan’s booth, in the form of the #1 Motul Autech Nismo and #24 Kondo Racing car. The drivers who race the former, Satoshi Motoyama, Mitsunori Takaboshi and Katsumasa Chiyo happened to be on-stage for a live interview when I arrived.
Toyota occupied huge floor space with three separate booths made up of their road-car division, TRD and consolidated racing division known as Toyota Gazoo Racing. I wasn’t sure if TRD’s wild, dry-carbon roof and paneled 86 demo-car was flaunting prototype or production parts.
2017 marks Toyota’s comeback to WRC (after an excruciating 18 year hiatus) with their new Yaris WRC. To celebrate, Toyota dusted the cobwebs (and mud) off of their yesteryear rally legends for an outing at TAS 2017. I’ll be one to follow the Yaris WRC during the 2017 WRC season as it was developed and will be managed by the legendary Tommi Makinen. Feasibly, if the car is able to win multiple championships, I hope we’ll see a future limited-edition Yaris TME road-going variant, akin to the Lancer Evolution 6.5 TME.
Next door from Toyota was Lexus Gazoo Racing’s booth. Similarly to the other OEMs, Lexus used TAS 2017 as an opportunity do debut their new RC F GT3 and LC 500 Super GT race-cars. The LC 500 will be replacing their outgoing GT500-class RC F, which happened to take out last year’s championship. The exact wining car (#39 Denso Kobelco Sard) was also proudly on-display.
It was inspiring to see the Japanese OEM’s engagement in introducing children to the world of cars and motorsport. Some of the initiatives I observed included mascots posing for photos, car-themed children activity giveaways and the opportunity to sit in some of the race-cars.
Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Lotus were the only non-Japanese OEM manufactures in attendance at TAS 2017.
Suzuki and Daihatsu were present but had nothing remarkable that caught my eye, while Subaru’s booth was very dim and crowded. I did managed to get a snap of the new WRX S4 STI Sport (which mind you is a JDM and CVT-only model) but wasn’t able to walk much further as their booth was filled to the brim with attendees. After a casual stroll to the Mazda booth, I was freely greeted by the new MX-5 RF Custom Style (based off the MX-5 RF RS which dolefully, is not available in Australia).
Honda showed off a few cool things in the form of road, race and concept-cars. The Japanese public were shown for the very first time, the brushed-aluminium bodied 2017 Civic Type R prototype, stormtrooper-looking Mugen S660 concept, as well as the 2017 Super GT GT500-class NSX-GT. I was mind-blown to see three second-generation NSXs present, with Honda generously allowing anyone to sit in either a red or white example if they were heroic enough to brave a lengthy queue. Being impatient, I lazily elected to join the shorter S660 queue instead. A third pearl-white NSX with Alonso and Button’s squiggles sat close to the very same McLaren/Honda MP4-31 that they piloted in last year’s 2016 Formula 1 season (albeit with disappointing results).
Coming up next in the TAS 2017 sub-series, I’ll show you the delightful standouts that I noted from the leading tyres and wheel manufactures.
