Makoto Arimoto

The bassist gets handed the mic

Arimoto, who had been in charge of fuel-cell bus development, thought, as did those around him, that he would become head of fuel cells, when he was suddenly made chief engineer of the Prado. By custom chief engineers came from testing or body engineering, and he was the first from the Electronics Engineering Division. For Arimoto, a bassist in his student band, it was like being handed the mic in the middle of a concert and told to sing. Having accepted, he made no excuses, recalled how the CEs he had served in the Electronics Engineering Division worked, and played the lead vocalist by imitating what he had seen.