Akio Toyoda takes the wheel as 'Morizo'

KATSUYAMA, Japan -- When it comes to preaching love of cars, Akio Toyoda leads by example.

At a remote Japanese mountainside in mid-October, the 60-year-old CEO was prowling pit row at 6 a.m. in a red-white-and-black Toyota Gazoo Racing suit checking out the competition.

Hours later, he was piloting his No. 104 silver Toyota 86 coupe around the surrounding hills as one of 75 entrants in the Fukui Rally, a stop on a national circuit sponsored by Toyota.

It's a decidedly local event. No national media, no crowds, no big-name drivers or advertisers, except Akio himself and Toyota Motor Corp., the country's biggest, richest automaker.

With no pretenses, the chief executive queues in line with the amateur drivers to register and then stands blended into the crowd, listening patiently to safety instructions and course rules from the event's organizer. Later, Toyoda greets fans, poses for photos and does a stand-up for a local broadcaster singing the praises of the fukudon rice bowl, a local delicacy.

Getting out and driving, no matter how grassroots, is key to Toyoda's effort to cultivate excitement for cars within Toyota. The ossified bureaucratic giant, critics say, lost its way when employees became mired in their daily desk jobs and drifted away from four-wheeled product.

The Five Continents Drive is one response. Toyoda's hot laps are another.

He spent six years perfecting his feel for the car under the tutelage of Toyota's revered master test driver, the late Hiromu Naruse. Toyoda holds the company's top-ranked S-class internal driving license. Insiders call him "Top Gun."

Toyoda's crusade presents an image of an automaker steered by a man who really knows his cars. This follows a more European model and stands in direct contrast to Toyota's recent history as a company run by bland, dour-faced bean counters in black business suits.

It also inspires other employees, from the executive suite to the assembly lines. Beside Akio in the Fukui Rally was board member and Senior Managing Officer Shigeru Hayakawa.

Buckling in for his first-ever race, Hayakawa drove a souped-up Vitz hatchback emblazoned with an anime-style cartoon caricature of a blond-haired "Gazoo Lady" race queen.

Toyoda, who as a boy aspired to be a taxi driver, assumes a split personality as car-crazed CEO.

In the office, he is Chief Executive Toyoda, Japan Inc. champion and grandson of the founder. On the track, he is Morizo, the nom de guerre emblazoned on his helmet and car.

"Our employee team said to me, "You are Morizo today, not president,'" Toyoda said on the sidelines of the Fukui Rally. "There is a sense of closeness. They feel that they can talk about anything and approach me. But when they view me as president, they keep a distance."

The public, as well, find it easier to cheer on Morizo, a seemingly unattached ambassador of driving fun, rather than the clearly partisan Toyoda, scion of Toyota Motor Corp.

"I think there is something more I can contribute to increasing car lovers in various places not as Toyota president but as Morizo," Toyoda says.

Toyoda devised the Five Continents Drive as a way to get more employees into cars and charged up about driving. The Toyota chief hasn't joined any official convoy tours so far, but he has privately driven stretches of the routes in Australia, North and South America.

"What matters to Toyota is that more and more people understand what I do on the roads," he said. "That's what I believe in. That will help us make ever-better cars, for sure."