Chiba Days #9 - Tokyo Motor Show Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome back to another chapter of Chiba Days. Today, we will be taking a look at a two part series from my recent visit to the ongoing Tokyo Motor Show (TMS) 2017. As there are quite a lot of photos for the entire post, I will try to keep everything else as short as possible.

Tokyo's biggest motor show is held once a year and is usually held in the Tokyo Big Sight convention center in Odaiba. Yes, the same Tokyo Big Sight that hosts Comiket. The other big automotive convention is Tokyo Auto Salon which is held in Makuhari Messe.

 I arrived at Tokyo Big Sight shortly after 4 pm to take advantage of the half-priced tickets which were made available after 4 pm. This was my first time attending TMS and I assumed turn outs would be low which attributed to the half price tickets. But, the opposite happened to be true. 

Judging from the number of people who exited at the station, I immediately realized that it was not only me that was here to take advantage of the half-priced tickets. In fact, the queue for on-the-spot tickets was frighteningly long. Fortunately, Japanese efficiency meant that the queue was moving very quickly and in under 10 minutes, I had gotten my tickets and was ready to start my adventure. 

When it was my turn to enter, the sun had already begun to set. I did not have to wait long rather, the sun sets early in the evening as winter approaches.

The after 4 ticket costs 900 Yen, half the price of normal admissions. The event goes on until 8 pm which is more than enough time to cover all the halls and exhibits.

The event itself was split into two main halls. The East Hall and the West Hall. The majority of manufacturers could be found in the east halls which was my first destination. 

Upon entering one of the east halls, I was immediately greeted by the sight of a large Porsche booth. 

The Japanese love Porsche, maybe even more so than the Germans themselves and that is immediately apparent from the number of people crowding Porsche's booth. It was probably the most visited booth among all the manufacturers.

Aside from viewing all these brand new models, visitors were also given an opportunity to seat in the cars which remains to be one of the biggest allure of such events. 

Aside from all the brand new models, Porsche also took the opportunity to bring in one of the classic 356 Roadsters from the Porsche Museum all the way in Stuttgart. 

Next to Porsche was an equally luxurious marque, Lexus. Lexus were in full force this year celebrating the 10th anniversary of their F series. 

One of the cars I had really been looking forward to seeing was the 10th anniversary special RC F. 

It looked good in photos and even better in the metal. 

The LC 500 received quite a healthy amount of attention. With this much attention to detail, one would hope parent company Toyota would do the same for their "lesser" cars. 

Volkswagen had a booth too but, the only really interesting car was the up! GTI.

Mitsubishi has decided to revive the Eclipse name, now as a Crossover. I cannot say I approve, not one bit.

Even their new e-volution concept is an SUV. I really hope Mitsubishi would get back to making proper road machines already. 

Next up was Nissan, my personal favorite. This year, they were promoting their new Nissan Intelligent Mobility. Basically self-driving with several modern integration such as electric motors. 

Nissan has been going on with the open cabin concept for a while now and still persist with their devotion to self-driving cars. 

But, the coolest car by a long margin in the entire Nissan booth was the 2017 MY GT-R. In Katsura Orange no less!

Nissan has been producing the same chassis GT-R for the past 10 years and are slated to replace it with an all-new model in 2020. 

Sorry, no new Fairlady or Silvia this year. Instead, all we get is the Note Nismo. 

Around the time of my visit, I was lucky enough to catch the ongoing presentation. While I am not big on the whole self-driving and connected cars concept that Nissan is pushing, I will admit that they did a very good presentation especially in highlighting their vision for cars in the future. 

I actually like the new Nissan Leaf. It has a claimed range of 400km, good performance figures and tastefully modern looks. The Nismo version spices things up a little but, it is still no Fairlady or Silvia. 

Moving on, there was Subaru's booth. Many people, me included, were intrigued by the tent propped up over this XV.

The Impreza Future Sport concept, I am not exactly sure what this car is supposed to be as much of its design queues are identical to the outgoing Impreza and there is not much "concept" about it. 

This, on the other hand, is the concept for the next WRX STI model. It looks good and I hope Subaru can keep the production model as close to the concept as possible. 

Also on show was Subaru's Super GT300 BRZ. 

The GT86/BRZ is just one of those models that look so much better with a wide body kit. 

In comparison, the standard BRZ looks rather bland and narrow. The newly announced STI version does spice things up a little but, more mods are still needed to make the platform shine!

At first, I was wondering why there were so many men gathering around the BRZ. Not long after, I found out why. Race queens. 

On the other hand, I was considerably more interested in the limited production S208 WRX STI. 

The S Series Impreza(s) has always been a little more special sporting mostly handling tweaks which really help bring the car alive at tracks. 

Bridgestone brought with it an Aston Martin DB11.

While, Potenza brought a plane. 

You would be surprised at the number of cars Renault managed to fit in their relatively small booth.

But, I was only interested in the new Megane RS. This things looks proper serious!

Renault even brought their F1 car.

Audi had the most artsy booth of them all. No doubt about that. 

Performance was not an emphasis for Audi's booth but, serious horsepower was still represented in the form of the all new RS 4 Avant;

And the R8 V10, the last bastion of naturally aspirate supercars.

Pop over to the opposite haul and BMW is the first booth to greet you. 

Whereas Audi preferred to keep things subtle, BMW was all about its M machines including the newly released M5. 

Several years after its release, the M4 still looks fresh and the newly updated packages help keep it up to pace with competitors too. 

I was actually rather surprised to see an Alpina booth and out of all the booths, Alpina's was the only one closed off to visitors. Exclusivity indeed!

I had never seen so many Alpina cars in one place and everytime I do, it always is in Japan. That really should come to no surprise as Japan is one of the biggest Alpina customers worldwide. 

Mazda's booth did not show any new models aside from some sleek looking concepts. Another year, another year without a new RX-7.

So, I headed on back to the BMW booth to check out the new Z4 concept. At this point, I was thinking where is the new Supra then?

An 8 series concepte made an appearance too. 

Then, there was the big boy, the Mercedes AMG One. 

Limited to 100 models, this supercar brings F1 technology into road cars and even uses the same engine as the current Mercedes F1 car. 

This is probably the first and last time I will see this car. 

While I may not be the biggest fan of the design, it definitely has many interesting designs and looks much like an F1 car with a silhouette. 

Many people flocked around the Mayback S650 and for good reason. This car costs nearly as much as a house!

On the other end of the hall, the vehicles were largely commercial or heavy duty vehicles. 

This meant less visitors to the booths but, I still found the vehicles on display every interesting. 

There was even a Dakar Rally model!

Tucked away at the edge of the hall is one of the few Official Goods Shop. I wanted to get something as a souvenir for the occasion but, could not find anything of interest. 

Of course, it would not be a Japanese exhibition without gachapon machines now would it? With that, I will leave you with these rows of gacha-machines and the promise that Part 2 comes tomorrow. Until then, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!