Conversation | Automotive Seasoning | GAZOO Racing

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“There is still plenty of room for seasoning the new Toyota iQ,” says Hiromu Naruse with a sparkle in his eyes. Nicknamed “Top Gun,” he is a veteran among veteran test drivers who has witnessed the birth of many Toyota vehicles over more than 40 years. He adds, “So now is the time to season the GAZOO version iQ.”

That word “season” shows up right at the beginning of the conversation. Seasoning a car may look easy, but it’s actually quite difficult, isn’t it? What exactly does Naruse mean by “flavor”?

“I use the terms ‘anticipatory taste,’ ‘real taste,’ and ‘aftertaste.’ If we make a comparison with cuisine again, anticipatory taste is the expectation that we experience when we see a dish on the table and think that it looks delicious. Real taste is when you actually eat the food and discover its taste. Aftertaste is the feeling after you finish eating that you want to eat it again. This is applicable to cars, too. You start by thinking that a car looks good and you want to take it for a drive. When you actually drive it, you decide it has a good feel, is comfortable, and so on. And after you get out of the car, you want to drive it again. The future direction of iQ will depend on those three elements.”

This explanation is easy to understand on an emotional level, but it is still puzzling as if it were Zen question and answer. That is, since motor vehicles are mechanical devices, if there is a taste that determines how a vehicle operates, it will be determined by its specifications as a mechanical device. And Naruse himself has been involved in that work of fine-tuning a vehicle’s mechanism.

“That is certainly true, but most customers are not concerned with such issues as the angle of the seat or the intricacies of the springs. When a customer purchases a car for 1.5 million yen, I want the customer to be satisfied with that purchase and have an irresistible attraction to that vehicle in their daily life. In the Japanese auto-manufacturing industry, however, everyone is in the habit of using check sheets to score everything according to categories. I think this is something of an occupational disease. This is the idea that if five is a perfect score and a certain category scores a two, then it is important to raise that score to three or four. This is ‘flaw-based thinking,’ whereby the focus is on remedying the flaws. That may be necessary to a certain degree, but everyone’s opinions are taken into account like a common divisor, and all individuality is lost.”

I had thought, though, that such an approach was the reason Toyota has been able to manufacture comfortable, high-quality cars…