JAPANESE ICONS
J-TURN
As the world pivots towards EV, Japan is busy figuring out how to keep its icons alive and kicking. We gather the concepts and assess their chances...
WORDS TOM FORD
PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN WYCHERLEY
“THIS IS A CULTURE WHOSE 200MPH BULLET TRAINS RUN THROUGH PADDY FIELDS TENDED BY HAND”
The electric revolution is a scary place to be if you’re a carmaker. Performance metrics have basically been crumpled up and chucked in the bin, ideas of refinement suddenly uprated to the point where some cars make you feel like you’ve gone very slightly deaf. Previous bars superseded not by margins, but miles. But there’s one place where electricity hasn’t quite nailed it yet: the art and soul of performance. Why? Because to people who like driving, ‘performance’ has turned out to be a much more nuanced argument than any set of statistics can provide. Being fast isn’t the argument ender that it once was.