Some Things Do Change

The presentation of the Tokyo Motor Show has stayed the same in the eight years that has attended; but the car manufacturers continue to up the grade and change the landscape of the automobile industry

An applegreen AMG GTR for the road and a Mercedes Formula 1 for the track; (Opposite) Porsche's classic 356 sports car, the author's star of the show here is something immutable and unchanging about the biennial Tokyo Motor Show experience. An invitation is received midyear from the organisers, including a questionnaire that has not changed one iota since I first received one eight years ago. It's always held at the same venue: the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition halls. The cast of exhibitors has not changed over the years, either. The show itself always takes place in the fall, and though I have always enjoyed Tokyo in the fall, that is another immutable in the Tokyo Motor Show experience.

While its external trappings may not have changed much in the eight years I have been a visitor, the Tokyo Motor Show itself has undergone a sea of change in its content. When I first viewed it in 2009, the emphasis was on the internal combustion engine: how to make it more powerful, yet cleaner and more efficient.In contrast, the theme of this year’s 2017 Tokyo Motor Show is “Beyond The Motor.” Some things do change after all. While today’s car manufacturers continue to chant that same “power, efficiency, cleanliness” mantra, their collective approach to achieving these goals has splintered into markedly different forms. Some have relegated the automobile that’s powered solely by an internal combustion engine to the dustbin of history, arguing that the immediate future