Tokyo Auto Salon

Next up in my Tokyo Auto Salon coverage, Toyota and Lexus. Recently, Japan’s biggest automaker hasn’t been offering as many enthusiast-friendly cars as its competitors, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find a bunch of interesting Toyotas at Auto Salon this year. You’ve already seen some of them sprinkled among my other Auto Salon posts, but there are plenty of others I haven’t covered yet.

Tokyo Auto Salon 2010

Feast your eyes on Tokyo Auto Salon 2008, a show that eclipses SEMA in every way possible. This annual auto show held at the Makuhari Messe of Tokyo’s Nippon Convention Center (located about 1.5 hours away from Tokyo Station) draws the biggest and baddest tuners in the Japanese aftermarket car industry.

 If you manage to weave through the hundreds of thousands of visitors and Japanese men with mini-ladders trying to take photos of the cute models, you’ll find the quality of tuned cars and beautifully designed booths are unrivaled. Other auto shows really need to take a cue from Tokyo Auto Salon’s insanely nice setup.

 There was no question the feature car of the show was Nissan’s GT-R (variations of this new beast were available from Blitz, HKS, Work Wheels and many other tuners), but my heart was set out to find it’s German rival — BMW’s E92 M3.