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Originally Posted by DAEMANO
I saw some merit of your statement until the boldface above. No, since you nor anyone else here is in board meetings this isn't something that has to be realized. In fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. Like...
Multi-million dollar investments in the LFA, SF-R, FT-1 and sports-sedan-ization of the Camry XSE. These major investments point to Toyota's desire to embrace at the very least the image of performance, but more likely improving performance across their line-up including actual fun to drive niche cars like the ones noted above. To my eyes Toyota's embrace of the 86 seems to be opposite of the market analysis you've provided above.
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You're right, I overreached.
But the fact is that getting a car like this made was a struggle. Combine that with past history and I'm not optimistic about seeing a true Mk2 86.
Which is why I bought one.
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You need to remember that this car was the result of an executive board meeting at Toyota in 2007 with the sole agenda that people around the world are losing interest in cars and what Toyota was going to do about it. One suggestion on how to address this was to go back to basics with a sports car that would rekindle interest. In the past, sports cars had been repeatedly rejected as having a poor return on investment, but at this meeting it was decided that if the technology division could make something that could restart interest, then the marketing division would support it.
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Yet the first question from the board when I reported back was, ‘how fast is it?’ They couldn’t imagine a car which drives like a dream but isn’t that quick. I was thinking that maybe the car guys were right when they said they thought Toyota would be the hardest company to get such a high-fun, low-top-speed car past.
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http://blog.toyota.co.uk/tada-how-to...eated-the-gt86