“It’s a real pity,” said Hiroshi Yokoyama, group manager of brand management at Toyota’s Gazoo Racing Co., the motorsports unit that oversaw the drive program. “But because of the coronavirus, we had no choice.”
Yet, even as Toyota’s drive came to an inglorious close, Japan’s biggest automaker is busy keeping its spirit alive. Now comes phase two: Compiling lessons learned and parlaying them into building vehicles that better fit the world’s diverse markets and customers.
The 111,500-kilometer (69,000-mile) Five Continents Drive was the brainchild of President Akio Toyoda in an effort to instill his oft-touted “ever-better cars” mentality across the company. According to Toyoda, roads teach the people, and the people make the cars.
“You’ve experienced the road, the cars and the people who use them with your own senses,” he told returnees after the 2017 drive. “Don’t rely solely on data. I want you to take what you felt with your own senses, take the true essence of things, and use…
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