When you go up to the second-floor lounge of the Toyota Technical Center Shimoyama, a spacious exhibition area opens up.
But the car in the front row looks a bit strange. It has scratches here and there, the front windshield shows serious damage, and the left side mirror is bent sharply inward.
It does not make a very suitable impression for greeting outside visitors. Some background explanation is needed.
The crashed car is the symbol of Toyota motorsports, the GR Yaris. And next to that car stands a life-size cutout of Toyota Group chairman Toyoda Akio. Using the stage name "Morizo," Akio, who personally competes as a motorsports driver, is smiling brightly in a motorsports uniform with his thumb raised. It looks as if he is proudly showing off the damaged car.
That's right. The person who put the GR Yaris in this condition was none other than Toyota Group chairman Toyoda Akio.
On the opposite side of the Akio cutout is a board explaining the course of the accident. The title reads "The GR Yaris trained by Morizo." It also carries the subtitle "a symbol of running, breaking and fixing."
As the explanatory text states, Akio personally participated as a test driver in the development process of the GR Yaris. Within Toyota Motor, Akio is known as the "master driver." That implies he is both the company's top decision-maker and a person qualified as a top-level motorsports driver.
The accident itself in the development process is not particularly important. The key point is that the group's top decision-maker personally participated in the development process as a master driver. If you visit the tour course at the Toyota GR Factory, which produces the GR lineup, the factory guide includes the phrase "thank you for breaking it." The logic is that parts broken during testing are improved into stronger parts that make drivers better.
The crashed GR Yaris displayed at the Toyota Technical Center Shimoyama soon becomes the philosophy of GR development.
Looking at the circumstances of the accident, there was no decisive defect in the car.
The GR Yaris is equipped with a vehicle stability control device called VSC (Hyundai Motor Company and Kia call it ESC, Electronic Stability Control), and in typical rally driving this device is turned off. Akio naturally participated in the test with VSC turned off. There was an instance of briefly turning the engine off and then on again, and in such cases VSC is generally reactivated for safety.
Akio did not realize this and, thinking VSC was off, took a sharp corner on a slope; when VSC activated, the car rolled over. When the ground and sky suddenly reversed, Akio and the co-driver communicated and calmly escaped from the vehicle. Because the car was fitted with a roll cage, both emerged unharmed and laughed heartily.
The entire process of the accident and escape was recorded by an in-vehicle camera, and Akio allowed that footage to be shown to visitors to the technical center.
The message the crashed GR Yaris sends is clear. "Accident experience becomes an important foundation for strengthening the skills of experienced personnel and staff safety protocols."
When opening the Toyota Technical Center Shimoyama in 2019, Toyoda Akio said, "About 3,000 GR and Lexus development team members and test drivers will drive cars here, test brakes and carry out improvement work. The more we drive and the more cars we break, the more complete the cars become. As a master driver, I look forward to spending a lot of time driving the Shimoyama roads."
Akio's philosophy is further refined by members of the center's core department, the Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division.
Read in Sino-Korean pronunciation, the name "Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division" may sound unfamiliar, but it is interpreted to mean a department that cultivates top technical drivers. The people who put visiting reporters in cars and drove high-difficulty circuits at high speed belong to this department.
The Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division is led by Director General Toyooka Satoshi. He was at the scene when Akio caused the GR Yaris accident. He was a key figure collaborating with master driver Morizo (Akio) to develop the mass-produced GR Yaris. He also led long-term efforts to train people and cars as team principal in the All-Japan Rally Championship in which Toyota Gazoo Racing participates.
In an interview with reporters from the Korea Automobile Specialized Press Association, Director General Toyooka introduced the department: "There are about 65 people in the Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division; in a word, they are the people who season the car's taste. This group has ranks under the top expert group 'Top Gun'—S2, S1, advanced, intermediate and beginner—and the organization is structured so members can be promoted through the ranks to reach the top."
They consider themselves "Morizo's front-line combat unit."
Director General Toyooka said, "We are the front-line unit that reads and materializes Morizo's ideas. Although I serve as head of this department, the real head is Morizo. I lost a test-drive competition to Morizo. It's a small organization of about 60 people, but Morizo's affection for this department is so deep that he calls himself the head. I am grateful to be able to work with Morizo."
So did Director General Toyooka really lose in competition to Morizo? Did the chairman not give full effort because he is the chairman? A mischievous follow-up question was asked.
Toyooka laughed and said, "I really competed seriously with Morizo on the course where the GR Yaris rolled over. But perhaps because I am cautious, I lost by 6 seconds. After efforts I reduced it by 1.7 seconds, but I still need to make up 4.3 seconds to truly become the head."
I wondered whether these drivers are praised for breaking cars like Morizo.
Yabuki Hisashi, chief researcher in the Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division who participated in the interview, said, "In the past there was pressure that you must not break cars. But after Morizo's philosophy of 'breaking it and fixing it to become stronger' was declared, the burden has eased. When a car is broken, engineers analyze the cause and fix it, making the car stronger. Damaged parts can also be made stronger through analysis."
He then joked that "we are not working to break things on purpose," and added, "Because customers may encounter various environments while actually driving, we conduct tests considering those assumptions."
Regarding the new launch of the Century brand, which was a main event at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, a clear development plan had not yet been established.
Asked what flavor the Century brand cars will be tamed to, Toyooka said, "We have just announced starting Century, so we have not yet set a specific direction. But Morizo defined the Century model as a car that only Japanese craftsmen can make, in Japan. The direction is probably in Morizo's head, but it has not yet been communicated to developers and test drivers. It will be adjusted through future discussions."
When developing cars, they also experience competing brands' cars; a recent car that impressed them was Hyundai Motor Company's Ioniq 5N.
Yabuki said, "In the past we bought and analyzed a variety of European cars. At that time we focused on catching up with European cars, but now we concentrate more on the cars we want to make based on our own metrics. Recently I drove Hyundai Motor Company's Ioniq 5N and was really shocked. Morizo had a similar shock and ordered the development of a car that would not lose to the Ioniq 5N. I also interact with Park Jun-woo, executive director of Hyundai Motor Company N brand management, as a fellow car enthusiast."
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