My fears about the number of no-shows at the Toky motor show this year have been confirmed. As was the case at the last Tokyo show in 2011, all the Americans have stayed away as have the Italians and Chinese. There are no ultra luxury British marques in attendance either.
It is their loss. This is a compact show yet still well attended by both the world’s press and the Japanese public. Stands are smaller, simpler and cheaper here than anywhere else in the world we regularly visit. Also because you don’t spend more than half your time walking between stands, it is a very efficient show for press, public and manufacturers alike: you simply get to more stands and see more while you’re there.
Some have taken the opportunity to clean up: mindful that Tokyo lies some 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles’ rival offering, both Jaguar and Porsche decided to attend both, pulling the wraps off the Macan and F-type Coupe on stands packed with the press. With so many no-shows, it was far easier for them to stand out here than they’d have done at the sprawling metropolis that makes up the Frankfurt show halls.
As for the Macan, I like the idea – or as much as I’m ever going to like the idea of an Audi-based Porsche SUV. A chum who works for Porsche and happens to be here with no PR brief told me that so far as the way it drives is concerned, comparisons to the Audi Q5 are ‘irrelevant’. It shares the skeleton, he says, but the development from scratch has been all Porsche. They did it with the Cayenne whose Touareg underpinnings are almost forgotten these days, so I see no reason not to expect the same of the Macan.
As for the F-type, I think it looks even better in the flesh than the photographs, the tapering roofline – especially with the glass roof option – is particularly captivating and gives the car a look and stance that’s utterly different to the convertible. But I am disappointed that it is, as most 20kg lighter. Indeed an Jaguar F-Type R is actually 5kg heavier than the substantially bigger, old and similarly aluminium XK coupe. How was that allowed to happen?
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