CarGene
Naohiko Saito

Naohiko Saito

ToyotaDevelopment team member / Development lead

Chief engineer who developed the GR Yaris, a symbol of car-making that starts from motorsport

Timeline

  1. 1997

    Joined

    Toyota Motor Corporation Overseas Service Department

  2. 2001

    Toyota USA

  3. 2004

    Toyota Motor Corporation Lexus Center

  4. 2009

    Toyota Motor Corporation Higashi-Fuji Technical Center

  5. 2013

    Toyota Motor Corporation TC Company

  6. 2020
    Yaris 4th generation
    Yaris 4th generation

    2020–presentDevelopment team member

    Worked with

  7. 2020
    GR Yaris
    GR Yaris

    2020–presentDevelopment lead

    Toyota can't make sports cars

    What Morizo evaluates is the realm of speed and g-forces beyond the limits of the tires, where you control the car, a realm Toyota had never evaluated in development before. When he drove the first GR Yaris development car, the team was full of confidence, but it was so bad that people were saying maybe Toyota couldn't make sports cars, maybe they should ask Subaru for a sporty 4WD. Saito and his team started from there.

    To the race scene with production engineering

    Normally production engineering is consulted once prototypes exist, but for the GR Yaris, production engineers were brought in from the planning and development stage. Together they toured the places where rally and circuit racing teams build their cars, and thought about how to achieve race-car-level precision and lightness on the production line without raising investment or cost. The people who assemble the car were also given test drives, so the team's commitment was shared even before line-off.

    The President's 4WD Practice, in a Toyota

    President Akio Toyoda, who competes in rallies as Morizo, was using Subaru's WRX to practice 4WD driving. Saito says that, as an employee, this was deeply frustrating. He wanted the president to practice in a car built by Toyota employees. That frustration also lies at the root of the GR Yaris's development. For 20 years Toyota had not built a sports car with its own hands, and had developed no sports 4WD at all.

    Fix It on the Spot, and One More Run

    The comments of a driver stepping out of the car cannot be understood in detail by engineers from words alone. Until then, after receiving comments, they would make fixes and bring the car back one or two months later. On the GR Yaris, they collected all the driving data and looked at the timing of the accelerator and brakes, the steering angle, and the suspension stroke to grasp the meaning of the words on the spot. As soon as a fix was made, they asked, "Please drive it one more time." It was a method learned from watching engineers fix things on the spot at races, where test time is fixed.

  8. 2021

    Chief engineer, GR Project Promotion Division, GAZOO Racing Company

Profile

Chief engineer of the GR Yaris. Development chief engineer in the GR Project Promotion Division of GAZOO Racing Company.

Translated from Japanese sources.

Toyota engineers

All Toyota engineers