24 hours on from the announcement of Toyota departing Formula One, here’s my purely personal thoughts.
I always thought F1 was a poor fit for Toyota / Lexus. Sure it’s high tech and high profile with a global TV audience of many millions, but unlike Ferrari, that’s not who they make cars for. The Prius and other hybrids jarred with the arrogant, Beautiful People image of F1 and for sure, Max Mosley won’t have helped.
I believe the new chairman realised before he even took office that F1 didn’t fit with Toyota’s future. The company has been changing rapidly in it’s stance,what it stands for, the cars it builds and how it’s going to interact with it’s customers in future years. Sitting in the air conditioned motorhome behind barriers and smoked glass in the F1 paddock just doesn’t fit with the way they see Toyota and Lexus and reaching their customers in future.
The key phrase in their communication on this is:
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“Drawing on its experience in F1 and other motor sports, TMC intends to move forward in developing exciting production vehicles, such as the Lexus “LFA” supercar and compact rear-wheel-drive sports cars. In motor sports, it will not only race in various categories, but will also actively contribute to further development of motor sports by supporting grassroots races and planning events in which it is easy for people to participate.”
Indeed Akio Toyoda’s speech says, “A commitment to contributing to society through the manufacture of automobiles has steered all activity at Toyota since the company’s beginning. Today, we are undertaking several initiatives to promote the development of automotive culture on a new and higher plane.”
The world of marketing is vastly different from the one it was when they entered F1 eight years ago and Toyota have been very quick indeed to get the whole vibe that’s going around social media, car communities and the way that people digest information.
Take a look at what TMC & Lexus USA did at SEMA. Many car makers I can think of would take one glance at the tuner Lexus ISC’s and say, “Sorry, that will invalidate your warranty” Toyota & Lexus, instead showcased a whole range of really cool IS-C’ convertibles, GS300 and Tundra trucks that pick up on the whole vibe and give them interaction and credibility.
The way that Toyota have so many blogs, Flickr pages, Twitter feeds and other branches of communication globally is vast. They really ‘get’ social media and how they can reach out to their customers like no other car maker. It’s like social media was made for Toyota and Lexus and the way they see things.
My personal view is that they’ve realised they don’t need, in fact probably don’t want F1 in their future plans.
Good for them. What’s your view?