[News] 86 / BRZ Chief Engineer wasmoved from minivans

This brief item was in the Driven magazine section of yesterday's New Zealand Herald newspaper ...

From whoa to much faster go, go, go ----------------------------------- Now that the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ sports coupes are realities, some motoring analysts have become fascinated by the behind-scenes struggle within the large, conservative corporate structures to get the joint project off of the ground.

How, for example, did Toyota 86 Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada become involved in the early days? Did he have to step over dead bodies, or engage in some heavy-duty water cooler politics?

Apparently not. Writing on Toyota UK's blog, he says, "I had been working in the minivan department engineering new product, when I was called to a meeting. 'Forget about minivans,' they said, 'you are now working on a sports-car project.'"

Good Oil [the NZ Heald column] suspects he didn't beg to stay on with the vans.

Makes you wonder what kind of "minivan" he was working on as "new product" when management suddenly thought, "Hey, that will make a good sports car". ;-)

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the management have finally got the simple idea into their skull that some small but not insignificant part of the population wants a REAR WHEEL DRIVE minivan

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Maybe they were trying to create a competitor for this old Lamborghini Minivan concept vehicle. ;-)

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given that cayenne sold beyond the wildest dreams of posche management I don't see why not (just don;'t call it a minivan in the states, wink, wink). Lambo IS (was?) working on a crossover. According to the pics I saw that thing has TONS of clearance in wheel wells and very agreeable approach and departure angles, so it could be useful offroad if it makes to production in that shape and form. Question is whether there is a market for that contraption. Will see how rich folks react to that. Should sell if it's gonna be the cheapest lambo as cayenne was the cheapest porsche. Though porsche engineers had the guinea pig of computer on wheels known as touareg to practice on, plus all the pent up energy left over from the previous experiment 959 that never saw production

maybe they will sell the crossover and the minivan through a newly created brand designed for a lower priced niche. could be popular among new money in bric countries and bring lambo some much needed cash

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Many companies are jumping on the crossover bandwagon (or should that be tailgate?) - as well as the Porsche and VW ones and the usual Mazda, etc., there's also one from BMW, Bentley, and even a Mini-based one, plus one from Aston Martin. Ferrari have fairly recently released a four-wheel drive car, so maybe a crossover isn't too far off (despite management claims they won't make one).

That Lamborghini minivan / people-mover is quite old now, so either they've dropped it or it was just a design house's one-off concept. As far as I've read (which isn't a huge amount) the Lamborghini crossover is still somewhere in the background. Lamborghini of course did used to make tractors, so might be interested in a cash "cow". ;-)

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