Five game switching cars at the two thousand fifteen Tokyo Motor Showcase

Mazda is getting racy. Nissan is determined to regain the lead in electrified cars. And Lexus wants to remind the world it reinvented the luxury car market more than two decades ago.

For the very first time in years, the Tokyo Motor Showcase isn’t a quirky outlier in the auto display circuit. This could be the year that this onetime extroverted and over-the-top showcase regains all of its former swagger.

Why now? Well, it’s because this year’s showcase will permit Japan’s major automakers the chance to do something totally out of character.

They can brag. They can boast. And, most importantly, they can remind the world that, not so very long ago, they trained the world how to build vastly better cars.

The two thousand sixteen model of the Nissan Leaf will feature a 30-kilowatt-hour motor that supplies 107-miles of driving range.

Nissan’s Concept two thousand twenty Vision Gran Turismo, a concept supercar developed for the Playstation racing movie game Gran Turismo, is set to make its real-life debut at the Tokyo Motor Demonstrate.

Gas is cheap, so let’s all buy ample trucks! If you’re old enough to reminisce, this happened once before, back in the late-1990s – and Detroit’s Big Three were the worst culprits. Abandon petite cars, let your family sedans go stagnant, and reap the prizes (and short-term profits) from selling trucks. lots and lots of trucks!

Nissan is going against the grain by continuing the shove towards an electrified automotive future. With what many consider to be the next-generation Leaf EV set to debut in Tokyo, Nissan has a golden chance to prove you don’t need Tesla-levels of cash to love a fine electrified car. Yes, Consumer Reports keeps ‘cracking the internet’ with Tesla vehicles that score massively in their testing. That’s good, if you have $100K to spend on a sedan.

With greater range and a entire lot more visual excitement than the hatchback-only Leaf presently offers, Nissan could regain its position at the forefront of the EV market. Build a crossover, design a roadster, add a sedan and, oh my goodness, before you know it, Nissan could have a utter suite of Leaf-based EVs we all can love. The very first step occurs now, here in Tokyo.

Mazda is bringing a brand fresh sports car to the two thousand fifteen Tokyo Motor Display media preview on Wednesday, October 28. The Daily News Autos team will be in Japan to cover the launch live, as it happens.

By 1995, the RX-7 had a curvy fresh design and an even more powerful, now turbocharged, Wankel engine under the spandex hood.

A Japanese sports car revolution is brewing and we could have little Mazda to thank for it. Toyota once had the Supra and Celica, Honda had the S2000 and Prelude, Nissan the 240SX and 300Z, and Mitsubishi the Eclipse and Evo. Almost all of them went away, however a duo are attempting to stage a comeback.

However, when it came to technical audacity and sheer beauty, nothing came close to the last-generation Mazda RX-7. Powered by a Wankel rotary engine, the RX-7 was hook-up on wheels and loved to rev (and gobble fuel, but let’s not digress). Fuel economy notwithstanding, Mazda remains the only Japanese automaker to win at the twenty four Hours of Le Boy’s, despite being a fraction of the size of its competitors.

With a fresh concept sports car set to break cover in Tokyo, could Mazda reignite the Japanese sports car war? Oh yes, we think it will. And it will have a Wankel rotary under the spandex hood, you better believe it. And if we’re wrong. blame Mazda.

At Honda’s Tochigi proving ground, an open track, the promise of two long laps, and a relatively friendly top-speed-limiter permitted us to get a taste of the NSX’s spectacle.

On the long straight that bypassed the finish line, the speedometer displayed an indicated one hundred ninety two km/h (about one hundred twenty mph) before the track-day limiter kicked in. The NSX stayed cool and undisturbed at buck-and-change speeds across.

The interior is beautiful, striking a visual balance inbetween over-the-top spectacle cars, along with usable refinement and clever ergonomics. Material quality is top-class.

Japan’s “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep power to a mere 280-hp witnessed the NSX get outclassed at the end of its run.

The launch of the Acura NSX supercar came at a time when the Japanese auto industry seemed on the brink of taking over the world.

Now here is a brand we absolutely love to love, and sometimes love to hate even more. Honda has won in Formula One with the likes of Aytron Senna and McLaren, and introduced an incredible array of sporty cars that didn’t need to break the bank. The Prelude, CRX, and S2000 were all fantastic cars – and they’re now all history.

Eventually, Honda shows up ready to find its inner-self, as the creator of sports cars that are affordable by the masses. The fresh U.S.-market Civic is a excellent very first step, if you’re looking to balance your budget (at least until the Type-R variant arrives!). Yet all the best car companies need a soul, and the Acura NSX is it for Honda. As the one-time halo of the Acura brand, the NSX was the pinnacle of Honda’s technical expertise in the 1990s.

We love that the company is bringing back this supercar in hybrid form. However we’re even more excited about what this means for the Honda brand as a entire. A better Honda means the better car world, end of story.

Lexus’s venerable LS is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and a concept or even an outright debut could be in store for the fresh generation of luxury sedan at the Tokyo Motor Showcase.

When it burst onto the car scene in 1989, the original Lexus LS was a revolution.

Over the years, the LS has engorged in size and price.

We’d love to tell you that the S-FR concept set to be shown here in Tokyo has a chance at production, much less a future spot in Toyota’s U.S. lineup. While part of this equation might come true, we aren’t holding our breath that Toyota USA dealerships will ever have this 2-passenger, rear-wheel-drive sports car share showroom space with Camry sedans and RAV4 sport-utes.

That’s okay because this year in Tokyo, Toyota’s luxury division, Lexus, wants to remind the world how it reinvented the luxury car world twenty five years ago. That was a time when German automakers had grown exceedingly lazy, while domestic brands like Cadillac and Lincoln were reeling from years of neglect.

When it burst onto the car scene in 1989, the original Lexus LS was a revolution; it was a bargain, it was quiet, and it was built like a bank vault, only better. Over the years, the LS has engorged in size and price. We’re hopeful the fresh model once again establishes a fresh standard when it comes to refinement.

Long-time makers of motorcycles, power equipment, and musical instruments, Yamaha are attempting their palm at a lightweight sports car concept for Tokyo 2015.

The one thousand nine hundred sixty seven Toyota 2000GT was considered to be the very first Japanese supercar.

Yamaha crafted the engine for the one thousand nine hundred sixty seven Toyota 2000GT.

How did a piano make this list. Oh ditzy person, you leave behind that Yamaha has often been amongst the best behind-the-curtain engineering wizards. Sure, your old synthesizer is pretty cool, but Yamaha once built engines for Formula One. It was also the brains behind cars like the original (and very cool!) Ford Taurus SHO. The company also crafted the engine for the one thousand nine hundred sixty seven Toyota 2000GT – considered to be the very first Japanese supercar – not to mention the banshee-like V-10 in the Lexus LF-A.

Oh yes, Yamaha also had one of the most incredible-looking supercars of all time. It was called the OX99-11 and had tandem-seating and a screaming V-12 mounted behind the cockpit.

Could Japan be ready to give the likes of Ferrari, Bugatti, and Mercedes-AMG a run for its money? Stranger still, might Yamaha be the one to lead the charge? The company could afford to throw everything into one all-for-nothing supercar, as a four-wheeled calling card for its technical prowess.

A Ferrari killer could be spelled Y-A-M-A-H-A. We love the sound of that, don’t you?

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