It's hard to imagine Toyota-rich, powerful, profitable-worrying about anything. In truth, Toyota worries about everything. That's the difference between the company that's about to become the world's number-one automaker and...General Motors. And the wild-looking coupe you see here, the FT-HS Hybrid Sports Concept, is an especially worrisome car for Toyota.



Built as Toyota's Detroit show star, the FT-HS is designed to showcase Toyota's leadership in hybrid powertrain technology. Underhood is a next-generation performance hybrid system built around Toyota's punchy 3.5-liter V-6 and capable of delivering approximately 400 horses. Performance targets include a 0-to-60-mph time in the 4.0-second range. Among the benchmark cars shown by Toyota during the FT-HS presentation were the Ferrari F430, Porsche 911, and Chevy Corvette.



Concept planner Chiharu Tamura says the FT-HS is a vision for a 21st-century sports car: a sports car that's eco-friendly and fun to drive; a sports car as fast as a Ferrari, yet as fuel-efficient as a four-cylinder compact. Were this not a Toyota engineer talking, your hyperbole meter would probably be hitting redline right about now.



The next-gen hybrid system is the key: In this system, braking energy is stored and can be released as what Tamura-san calls "explosive power" out of turns. He won't go into detail, but it's likely the system uses a combination of a lightweight lithium battery pack and capacitors. The battery pack provides the longer-term energy storage as used in Toyota's current Hybrid Synergy Drive vehicles, while the capacitors allow split-second discharge of large amounts of energy, perfect for delivering "explosive power." The trick is managing and integrating the various power flows-engine, battery, capacitors-so it feels seamless to the driver.


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I think it looks very nice myself

400bhp, 0-60 within 4 secs-ish and as efficient as a standard 4 cyl due to hybrid technology - can't be bad!

May be offered for around $60,000 (£30,000) and available V8 engine too.

What do you think of it?

yep it does look good

I love the looks, hopefully it'll look the same if it goes to market too.

Seems to me that as the supra and celica are likely to never be made again, this is the main sports marque from Toyota for the future.

Can't see Toyota ever making another exciting car.

Boo......spoilsport!

some how i dont think if they do make it will turn out anythink like that lol hope it does looks well sweet

Its concept

In fact, the concept hasnt even been manufactured yet. You should see how many hundreds of concepts manufacturers look through and announce before they actually pick one to base their next generation of cars upon, and even then the end products barely resemble the concepts.

The only "true" concept car that has really made a massive impact on the end models is the Alfa Brera, people loved the concept so much that they have not only heavily based their new gen of cars it, but even released the concept as a retail product.

But then, it wasnt as outlandish or impractical as most concepts are.