Japan’s carmakers in youthful drive
yokohama — By day, the Daikoku Parking Area hums with transport trucks en route to and from the Port of Yokohama. On weekend evenings, it transforms into a revved-up runway of tuned-up Japanese cars.
The unassuming rest stop is famous to car enthusiasts as a temple of the country’s motor culture, but it also illustrates a “youth” problem that auto companies such as Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor are scrambling to address.
The crowd — around 50 supercar fans who huddled around the back of a loading truck to get a first glimpse of the latest Lamborghini Huracan Performante delivered days before to collector Takeshi Kimura — were mainly men in their 40s and 50s. “Today’s young people, they came of age during the recession, and some of them didn’t grow up with a family car,” said Kimura, who has earned a reputation on Japanese social media as an ambassador of car culture thanks to stunts including coasting his Ferrari F40 down ski slopes and racing his supercars around a driving school practice course.
“As a result, people hit their 20s and they’re not aware of how fun cars can be.” On top of that, the cars whose finely-tuned growls echoed beneath the overpasses that criss-cross the Daikoku lot are mostly from the 1990s heyday of Japan’s auto industry. Today, even those young Japanese who do get the car bug are unimpressed by the domestic choices on offer.
“These days automakers just aren’t making cars I’d want to drive,” said Sho Watabe, a 20-yearold student who had rocked up to Daikoku in his 1996 Mazda RX-7.
“If you look at the way cars are designed these days, they all look the same. They all lack personality... if automakers keep making the same types of cars, young people are going to continue turning away from them.” —