Glitz and glamour are in short supply at the Tokyo show, although Toyota's president says he wants to put the fun back into driving Photo: Andrew English
He wasn't kidding. The show was considerably reduced in size, with motorcycles pulled into the main halls to make up the numbers and only Lotus, Caterham and Alpina making the journey from Europe.
Japanese car sales are struggling in spite of a scrappage tax and the high value of the Yen is making Japanese exports eye-wateringly expensive. Still, it's an ill wind that means the show halls were pleasingly quiet, with just 14 world introductions.
The roads in Japan are pretty deserted, too. The recession has reduced the amount of journeys and pulled cars off the road. Motoring is more fun out here than it used to be, partly as a result of recent investment in both roads and public transport. The irony has not been lost on wealthy Japanese who still have a job and a car.
The trouble is, young people are not buying into the dream of the open road, a trend that has been going on for some years now. "Interest in automobiles amongst the youth is weaker than in past years," said Satoshi Aoki, the chairman of the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers' Association (Jama).
Toyota's Toyoda concurred, but suggested the cause was the obverse to received wisdom, saying: "I feel it may not be the [young] customers who have drifted from cars, but us, the manufacturers." He is suggesting that car makers need to return to providing the fundamental excitement of cars to customers which will help further develop a motorised society.
How will this be done? Toyoda believes in closing the polar relationship between the internet experience of motoring and the reality. The company's Gazoo Racing (Gazoo.com), is an internet site that sponsors Toyota's Lexus LFA race car, providing a lively forum where web meets tyre smoke. Toyoda even posts a blog there as his avatar Murizio. "There I can write good and bad things about Toyota cars," he says.
Behind the scenes, however, Toyota has reacted late and probably too little to the global downturn. It reduced production by almost 30 per cent this year yet has not lost a single permanent staff member or closed a plant. That's almost suicidal in a production-based industry such as car-making and the company doesn't think it will be back in profit next year either.
The painter Vassily Kandinsky claimed he could "taste" colours, but Toyoda says he can "taste" cars like a chef. He wants to put the "flavour" back into Toyota cars to drive new sales and plans to personally drive every single Toyota model and then instruct his engineers how those cars should feel and "taste". This should be a change after the cold curry of the Camry, Corolla and Auris.
With oil pushing at $80 a barrel, fuel-saving is right on the agenda, with different companies taking different stances. Toyota is still banking on hybrids, with the launch of the Plug-in Prius and the Japanese market-only Sai saloon, which is mooted to achieve about 64mpg in the (highly unrealistic) Japanese driving cycle.
Nissan has put its money on battery technology and claims that by 2020 more than 10 per cent of its production will be of pure battery electric cars.
"Is it a risk?" asks Andy Palmer, the British Nissan executive charged with making it happen. "Of course it is. It is a bet, but it's got to be a half reasonable one, because it's to the benefit of mankind."
Palmer says that Nissan is already talking to utilities across Europe about a second life for the old lithium-ion units from cars, which would be used as buffer packs storing electricity generated by renewable sources such as wind and wave energy for peak demand times.
"It means the leased battery has a residual value and it completes the circle," he says. "I think it removes most of the barriers to battery-electric cars."
Palmer agrees that eventually government incentives such as the UK's mooted £5,000 grant system will die and electricity will also attract road fuel duties. He is confident, however, that the costs and capabilities of battery technology will advance in line with the eventual withdrawal of government incentives.
Honda is hedging its bets, with more small hybrids under new president Takanobu Ito, a reaffirmation of its commitment to fuel cells with the FCX Clarity, but also a range of small battery-electric vehicles starting with the EV-N, which the company claims is the result of 21 years of research into pure electric technology which resulted in the old model EV Plus being leased to customers in Japan and America in 1998.