After capturing the crown as the world's largest automobile maker from the US' General Motors, Toyota is not just satisfied with sales or profit figures. The new challenge for Toyota, says Mitsuhisa Kato, executive vice president in charge of technology development, is to be an "irreplaceable partner" for its customers.
In other words, the champion of the mass market now wants to make cars that people will passionately want to own and drive. Fitting with the firm's slogan "Toyota Reborn", some of its latest products including the 86, Crown, Avalon and Rav4 are among the "cars that we dared to reborn".
"What do you think of these cars? I think it's great there are 'pros' and 'cons'. We don't want a car that people neither love nor hate. We want to make cars that people fall madly in love with.
"That's the direction our vehicle development is taking," he said.
Design chief Tokuo Fukuichi said Toyota has been like "a department store", which has a full line-up of automobiles, and now it wants to become a "select shop".
"We're not exactly sure what a 'select shop' is, but we're going to guess the intention is to go from something like Target or Sears to Macy's or Nordstrom," Fukuichi told a global media session at the firm's Kaikan Museum in Nagoya.
The design boss outlined the three design goals of Toyota - strengthen overall design identity, refine each brand's front-end identity and tailor it to specific markets, and hone each brand's design philosophy.
"Before, we made cars so as not to be disliked by anyone. Instead of making all 100 people say it's okay, in the future we want 10 of them to say 'Wow, this is what I want. This is what I want to drive'," said Fukuichi, who was reportedly handpicked by president Akio Toyoda to take over the company's design group
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