For Americans who lived through them, the 1990s bring back memories of,
among other things, Bill Clinton, the young Internet, certain memorable
sitcoms and an eclectic music scene.
But for countless auto enthusiasts, the 1990s bring back memories of
another sort the golden age of Japanese sports cars, the Toyota Supra,
Acura NSX, Mazda RX-7, Nissan 300ZX, Mitsubishi 3000GT, Mazda Miata
and others were all high performance and in some cases relatively low cost
vehicles. That inspired a generation of racers and tuners and made their
way into massive film and video game franchises.
Now, in 2020, trucks and SUVs all but rule America.
But Japanese automakers are not giving up on these small, agile sports
cars. Some have been there all along and others are making a comeback.
But why do this now when some automakers are determining that cars are less
profitable and tougher to sell?
Are the new Japanese sports cars living up to the legacies of the old?
And will they stick around?
When Japanese automakers first began importing vehicles into the U.S.
in the 1950s, the cars they sold were mostly conservative and affordable.
There were even a few stumbling blocks for these importers, including a
skeptical American public and a lack of knowledge about the American
market. But over time, they improved.
In 1973, Toyota set up a design studio in the U.S.
to help executives in Japan understand a market so different from their
own. Japanese companies also made major innovations in manufacturing that
yielded low production costs and strong, consistent product quality.
They focused especially on reliability and earned a reputation for making
cars that were far more dependable than those made in Europe and the U.S.
But they weren't content with this reputation.
Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Toyota also became forces in racing throughout
the 20th century in the hope of proving to the world that Japanese
engineers could also hold their own on the track.
And that's one of the things that we've learned just got the research
recently, is that consumers associate Toyota with QDR quality, durability
and reliability. Toyota became the first Japanese automaker to win the GTO
class in the International Motorsport Association GT series in 1987.
Actor Paul Newman raced Datsun's and Nissan's in the 1970s and 1980s,
winning several races during that time, including two SCCA won
championships in 1985 and 1986.
The second of the two was Nissan's fiftieth national championship.
The Mazda RX-7 won several IMSA races in the 1980s, winning over 100 races
by 1990 and becoming at that point the most successful car in IMSA
history. Japanese automakers were already trying to lure American
performance enthusiasts at least as early as the late 1960s.
And early example that garnered a lot of attention in America was the
Datsun 240Z.
The 240Z was the car that got Americans thinking, well, wait a minute,
maybe Japanese cars are not just about inexpensive economy cars that I
commute to work. And that 240z popularity convinced Japanese makers that
performance cars were worth the effort in the U.S.
At first, these efforts were incremental.
Some of the names that became iconic began as variants of other cars.
For example, the Toyota Supra began as a variant of the Toyota Celica.
I love the idea that the Evo still looks like a Lancer or I love the idea
that the WRX still looks like a Subaru Impreza.
Like that's cool. And Americans thought that was cool, too.
And so they kind of took their formula and said, well, we can do it a
different way. The vehicles were also different from American sports cars,
which tended to be larger and stocked with eight cylinder engines.
Japanese sports cars were compact light and had smaller engines, often
using turbocharging to ramp up horsepower.
They took advantage of technological developments such as electronic
engine controls. The Mitsubishi 3000, for example, had a very
sophisticated all wheel drive system for its time.
They were also cars that took risks and did things differently from each
other and from other competitors.
Mazda, in addition to the Miata, they had the RX-7.
It was powered by a local rotary engine, which was unique in the industry.
Nobody else but Mazda was building Wankel by that time.
You know, there were some German vehicles in the 1960s that had wankel's,
but nobody else is doing it at that point.
Mitsubishi went for all in on technology to try and use technology to make
the cars fast as it possibly could be.
Toyota with the MR-2, they decided to make a lightweight mid-engine sports
car. You know, again, something quite different from what its competitors
were doing. So there were different approaches.
You know, it wasn't all variations on the same formula.
And while they were not exactly cheap, some of them could be had for less
money than cars with European pedigrees.
Notable cars from the era included the Mazda RX-7, the Toyota Supra, the
Mitsubishi 3000, especially the V.R.
for version and the Nissan 300ZX.
On the less expensive end, there were cars like the Subaru WRX and Mazda
Miata. Honda even tried its hand at making a supercar, which in the U.S.
was called the Acura NSX.
It started at just above $60,000 in 1991, equivalent to about $150,000 in
2021 terms. Despite some criticisms, the ambitious vehicle impressed the
auto world and was significantly less expensive than many high end exotics
from European makers.
What made these cars different is that it was really the first time that
you see a lot of really high performance bordering on high end Japanese
cars, because typically those cars had been about efficient performance or
about economy cars.
It was really a time when Japanese manufacturers had kind of come into
their own and American buyers realized those cars offer a lot of bang for
the buck. But over time, many of these cars and others like them
disappeared from product lineups in the U.S.
or became overshadowed by other concerns.
By the time it was discontinued in North America in 1998 and in Japan in
2002, the Toyota Supra had become something of a Hollywood star, thanks in
part to the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious, where the car was driven
by the late actor Paul Walker.
The NSX ran from 1990 until his discontinuation in 2005.
The Mitsubishi 3000 was discontinued in the U.S.
at the end of 1999, and the Honda 2000 was axed in 2009.
A few things happened.
First, many carmakers began focusing more on sport utility vehicles and as
time went on, competition among different makers for better and better
cars raised sticker prices.
By the '93,'94 time frame, as those prices kept creeping up, the sale
started tapering off.
Finally, these cars were never meant to be massive sellers.
More expensive vehicles like the NSX were aimed at attracting a small
number of buyers in any given year.
A few cars held on, though.
The Nissan Z line left the U.S.
in 1997, but it returned in 2002 when the 350Z was introduced.
The Mazda Miata has been continuously available in the U.S.
Subaru also kept the tracks and are staterooms on its Impreza sedan.
The wagon versions were discontinued in the U.S.
But look at some of the examples of the companies that stuck by what they
do. This is who we are.
We're going to keep doing it.
And now they're reaping the rewards.
Apart from those that never left or left b riefly, a few made bold returns
to the market. The Acura NSX was brought back in 2016.
The new NSX bears some impressive technical innovations, including three
electric motors, two on the front wheels that can help steer and brake,
and a third that acts like an electric turbocharger.
In this case, we wanted to explore and experiment with things that could
enhance that driving experience by taking advantage of three electric
motors that work not only to help you accelerate, it has drive by wire
braking and the front motors are independent.
And so they can like when you row on a boat, they can be like oars and
support your steering and put either left or right.
The shape of the car is also designed to maximize cooling.
And Honda was especially concerned with maximizing visibility out the
windshield, developing new technology to meet safety regulations while
still giving the driver a wide view of the road.
On the lower end of the price range, Acura's parent
Honda has also kept in production some sportier versions of its mainstream
passenger cars, such as the Honda Civic Type R, which has been in
production since the late 1990s.
Toyota is another automaker making a big bet on sportiness.
CEO Akio Toyoda, who took the helm in 2009, famously ordered the company
to stop making boring cars.
That has meant a new commitment to high performance and provocative
design. Everything that comes through Toyota Gazoo Racing gets Akio seal
of approval meaning he's driven it, he's pushed the vehicle to its
absolute limits and he's kind of certified it.
I think it's kind of rare in the automotive industry to have an executive
or the president of a company take that type of pride of ownership and
responsibility for the products that he brings to market.
Perhaps the biggest news in recent years has been the comeback of the
Supra, which Toyota himself was involved in heavily test driving the
vehicle at the famous track in Nürburgring Germany.
Supra is a halo car and it is not meant to sell in high volumes.
Somewhat controversial is the fact that the car is built in partnership
with BMW and has a lot of BMW parts in it, including a BMW engine.
Despite rankling some diehards who might have preferred an all Toyota
product, auto analysts think partnerships like this may be the best shot
automakers have at building these lower volume, but attention grabbing
cars going forward. And Supra is attracting new attention to Toyota.
The folks that are coming in from Supra are a lot of them are coming out of
the near luxury coupe and prestige luxury cruise line up to trading in
other brands like Corvettes and Porsche.
Toyota has a sub-brand dedicated to high performance called Gazoo Racing.
The Gazoo racing name has been around globally since 2007, but is being
introduced to the U.S.
with the Supra. The Supra will fall under the Gazoo Racing sub-brand.
The Supra is joined by a recent refresh of the Nissan Z., which received a
great deal of coverage in the automotive press.
This is a positive sign for Nissan, which in 2020 was struggling
financially and dealing with fallout from the arrest and subsequent escape
of former chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn.
These vehicles have generated a lot of excitement.
If there is one gripe among some auto enthusiasts, however, it is that
there seems to be less of the experimentation and risk taking than there
was 30 or 40 years ago.
Maybe as they start to transition to electric or make doing hybrids in
these vehicles, we might see, you know, some more interest creeping up for
some of these new vehicles if they do something truly different.
Our Japanese automakers making a good choice by staying committed to sports
cars. The strategy has a few things in its favor.
First, there is big business in nostalgia.
Hollywood film remakes and reboots, retro fashions and music and brand
name revivals seem to be popping up everywhere.
In an era of electric cars, autonomous vehicles and all sorts of futurism,
companies are betting that at least some buyers want a chance to own a car
they once loved or never had the chance to buy.
American carmakers are bringing back old names like Bronco, Blazer and
Gladiator. It's becoming a time when people who would have remembered
Japanese performance cars but couldn't afford them are now coming into
their own. So say younger Gen Xers and maybe even millennials that have
fond memories of some of these odd cars from the 90s.
There is a way to do this right of course, by ensuring the resurrected
product honors its namesake.
If that goes wrong, it can tarnish a legacy in some circumstances.
You've seen that the only thing nostalgic about a car or a truck or an SUV
is that they brought back the name.
And it's really nostalgic in name only.
And I don't think people like that.
I think that it feels like to the average consumer, well, you're just
doing this so that all of us who are of certain age will go by it because
we remember them as opposed to something like the Nissan Z or the Ford
Mustang. Secondly, emphasizing sportiness and high performance gives
Japanese automakers the opportunity to carve out unique niches in a very
competitive marketplace.
Japanese cars used to stand out for their dependability, but other car
companies have caught up.
And while dependability counts in a company's favor, it might not be the
strongest way to lure buyers, especially those at the profitable higher
end of the market. I think what's happening now is a lot of Japanese
automakers are really coming into their own and saying, hey, let's be
proud of who we are and let's advertise that.
Let's infuse our car not with the thing that makes it American, but the
thing that makes it uniquely Japanese.
And we're going to stand on that and walk away and go, there it is.
That's the best we can do. Until recently, Toyota's only in-house
performance badge in the United States was Toyota Racing Development.
But TRD badges had been found mostly on trucks and SUVs.
With a few exceptions, the automaker surprised the world when it came out
with TRD versions of the Camry, midsize and Avalon full sized sedans.
These were cars that previously had been the embodiment of the boring
vehicles. Akio Toyoda wanted the company to get away from.
Toyota has expanded its TRD lineup among SUVs with recent examples such as
the TRD Rav 4.
A bout 70 percent of the U.S.
auto market is sport utilities and pickup trucks.
And automakers everywhere have gotten on board.
Many automakers, especially American ones, have dropped most sedans and
coops altogether. Releasing a sports car this time is likely to be
accompanied by modest sales expectations.
But that halo effect is valuable, especially for companies such as Nissan,
that needs to maintain confidence that it can make great products.
And Toyota, that needs to remind people it can be a bit dangerous.
They see something like performance cars as a way to get people excited
about the brand, even if it's not the car that they expect to sell in the
huge volumes. It's the one that gets people's attention about the brand.
And while the pendulum has swung very far in the direction of SUVs and
trucks in recent years, there are some who think that at least partially,
it could swing back.
If you look at the sedan market and that's continuing to slowly decline.
But if you look at the sports coupe segment, that's actually on the rise as
predicted, to continue to rise over the next couple of years.
So what that tells me is whether all your neighbors are out buying SUVs.
There's a big group of us.
I shouldn't say big, there's a smaller group of us that don't want to give
up the fun of driving a sports car.
The effects of the coronavirus on work habits and commuting could also have
an impact on what kind of cars people buy.
Consumers who spend less time in their vehicles may opt for something that
is designed less for long commutes or hauling kids and instead for the
thrill of taking a drive.