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  Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda introduces the company's Lexus luxury brand, a two-seater sport model 'LFA' during a press preview at the 41st Tokyo Motor Show.

With the Europeans, Americans and Koreans absent from Tokyo motor show, the arena belonged to the Japanese, but it was the leviathan Toyota/Lexus group that commanded most attention.

And while that was mainly due to the four star cars on its stands – the Lexus LFA supercar and LFCh hybrid compact, and the Toyota FT86 sports coupe and FTEV2 electric vehicle – a lot of buzz also surrounded the address by the company’s boss.

Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the car giant’s founder who has recently taken the helm, spoke passionately about injecting life and lust back into the brand that has increasingly focused too much on volume sales.  “It is important to appeal to people’s senses,” he said.  “Today I will introduce you to … vehicles that people want to drive or simply want outright.

As an enthusiastic driver – who has tested himself against German’s famed Nurburgring circuit – Toyoda bemoaned the demise of the sports cars in Toyota’s past.  “Includng the Levin and Trueno ‘hachi roku’ models, the Supra, the Altezza and the MR-S … the fact that none of these vehicles is still being produced makes me, a serious car fan, really sad.”

Toyoda said the blame for a new generation of buyers shunning Toyota’s  -- and other manufacturers’ – cars lay with the carmakers rather than the public.  “I feel that it may not be the customers who have drifted away from the cars, but us, the manufacturers,” he said.  “For this reason, I believe it is the mission of automakers to provide the fundamental excitement of automobiles to customers, regardless of the era.”

With a backdrop of his online avatar simultaneously addressing a motor show audience in Toyota Metapolis – the brand’s version of a Second Life-like virtual world, Toyoda sounded genuine in his desire to see his company take a new direction.  The next few years will see how well that enthusiasm works to change the direction of the world’s biggest badge.