Toyota Gazoo Racing to promote LC customization at Tokyo Auto Salon 2025

MANILA: Toyota Motor Corporation’s racing outfit, Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR), will promote “the fun of customizing the Toyota Land Cruiser” at the upcoming Tokyo Auto Salon 2025.

Per the Japanese car manufacturer, TGR will have a “Land Cruiser Base” display at the motor show at the North Hall of Makuhari Messe convention center.

The company recently updated the nameplate with the brand’s Philippine subsidiary launching the refreshed Toyota Land Cruiser Prado sometime in July. Relatedly, Toyota Motor Philippines gifted two-time Olympic gold medalist Carlos Yulo a brand-new Land Cruiser Prado in the third quarter of 2024.

Nürburgring-related display

Aside from that TGR will also display vehicles related to competing at the Nürburgring. Known to many as the world's toughest road circuit, the German race track was the starting point of TGR and "Morizo" (Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda's pseudonym).

According to Toyota, Morizo and then-Toyota Master Driver Hiromu Naruse (who was Morizo's driving mentor) competed in the Nürburgring 24 Hours endurance race for the first time in 2007. There, the two — alongside Toyota employees who served as drivers and engineers — the crew fielded a modified used Toyota Altezza.

Representing the starting point of TGR’s philosophy of making ever-better motorsports-bred cars, the racing outfit plans to display — among other cars — the Toyota Altezza #109 (2007 NÜR 24h) used by that first team and the Toyota Supra (NÜR training car) that served as Morizo’s Nürburgring training vehicle at the time.

Talk sessions, outdoor demo runs

In addition to the company’s displays, Toyota will also hold talk sessions and ouiitdoor demo runs that circle the theme of “Challenging the Nürburgring.”

Here, Morizo and TGR drivers active in Japan and abroad (as well as various programs including one in which professional drivers, evaluation drivers, and engineers) will talk about the past and future.

Further, TGR World Rally Team (WRT) Team Principal Jari-Matti Latvala, TGR-WRT Deputy Team Principal Juha Kankkunen, and driver Norihiko Katsuta will drive rally cars and a concept vehicle model.

Tokyo Auto Salon 2025

This Tokyo Auto Salon will take place from January 10-12, 2025. It will happen at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba.

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