Stormforge

you can always make a bland car look hot...add 20" staggered wheels, drop, and kit...voila, goes from bland to sick in 60 sec

GS69

Toyota Design Leader Dezi Nagaya Moving to Yamaha

If you want to know who's been responsible for injecting some attitude into Toyota's designs in recent years, look to Akihiro Nagaya. As a design executive and as a freelance consultant, the rockstar designer known as Dezi has styled more concept and production cars for Toyota and its Lexus brand than we would dare to count. But now he's moving to Yamaha.

According to Automotive News, Dezi Nagaya moved on July 1 to the Yamaha Motor Company as its general manager of design – a role it had never filled before, choosing to outsource most of its design work. Nagaya's Facebook page indicates he's been at Yamaha since January. We don't know at this point whether Nagaya will be responsible for the design of all of Yamaha's motor vehicles – including its motorcycles, scooters, ATVs and marine products – or just its automotive operations, but the hire comes at a time when the company has been exploring further involvement in 4-wheeled transportation.

In the past Yamaha has provided engines for vehicles like the Lexus LFA, Volvo XC90 and Ford Taurus SHO, and toyed with the idea of a supercar with the oddball OX99-11 concept in the early 1990s, but more recently embarked on a partnership with Gordon Murray Design to build the Motiv.e city car.

Because Yamaha and Toyota each own a small piece of each other and collaborate on a range of projects, Nagaya's move is being characterized as a "transfer" between partners instead of a poaching of 1 company's employee by another.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

if correct, wasn't aware yamaha made the lfa engine. would make sense since yamaha has huge experience with screaming high rpm engines!

but that hair...

LexFather

Yahama did not make the LFA engine. Yahama was asked to tune the acoustics, which they clearly nailed.

1QWKGS4

iTrader: (3)

Great engineer/designer but he needs to "style" himself or at-least goto a salon.... or get some mousse..

spwolf

for decades now, every Toyota sports engine has had Yamaha hands in it, at least in some capacity. Toyota is also largest non-Yamaha shareholder of Yamaha.

Toyota changed structure of their car design recently, with individual designers "owning" the project and having full responsibility for design. NX was designed like that, plus it had a team of really young designers and it shows.. no stone was left unturned there.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

I do love me some Yamaha

cino

iTrader: (1)

Yamaha Co-developed the entire engine, not just the sound. It's said somewhere in LFA development video.

spwolf

Yamaha worked on 2000 GT... and on 2ZZ-GE, 4AGE, 3S-GE ... heck Yamaha also supplies wood trim for many Lexus vehicles. It has been working with Toyota for past 50 years :-).

cino

iTrader: (1)

I know, I'm just saying LFA engine is co-developed by both Toyota and Yamaha. Toyota and Yamaha relationship is far more than shareholder relationship. They have been working on many many sportcars together.