Melbourne International Motor Show – February 2008
When Toyota asked me if the TRD Toyota was available to be featured on the Toyota display at the 2008 Melbourne International Motor Show I was blown away.
For those of you that don’t know this is the biggest motor show in the southern hemisphere and plays a pretty big role within the Australian car industry. This was a big deal not only for us as a team, but for Drag Racing in general, as I am not aware of any other drag racing car that has ever been featured by a major manufacturer at this show. While the show runs for only eleven days it is a huge investment for all the car companies as they spend millions to display their cars.
One major problem that we had was that Ray Box and the Sports Compact Group had a meeting the weekend before in Sydney. If we committed to the show, would we be able to turn the car in less than a week. What if we crashed or hurt it? As a team we decided to miss the Sports Compact meeting and go to Melbourne. Now you have to understand that we are a team that likes to race so the decision to do a display instead of going racing was a very big deal, but so is the Melbourne International Motor Show.
With Sue out of action due to a broken ankle, Gonz hopped into the passenger seat of the transporter. We elected to travel via the coast road because the information we have was that the inland road is a mess. In order to get back for work Sue had booked us to fly out Sunday, but with only me driving the time would be tight. The trip was pretty uneventful except for a blown trailer tyre and the fact that at the required rest breaks both Gonz and I tried to sleep in the sleeper box. Thankfully he’s not that big!
Once we crossed the Victorian boarder I started to feel the pinch of the drive and about an hour and a half out of Melbourne I start to really struggle. Whilst most things that happen on tour should stay on tour, I have to have a go at 
Gonz. Now his main job was to sit in the passenger seat and keep me, the driver, awake but up to this point he had spent a large part of the trip in the sleeper box while we were traveling. So after waking him up, I said to him “now is the time you earn your money, we are about an hour and a bit out of Melbourne but in order to make the flight I don’t have time to stop so I need you to keep me awake”. All along the freeway there are signs “drowsy drivers die”, but Gonz said these make him sleepy – go figure. Well 10 minutes after our talk Gonz is sound asleep in the passenger seat but at least his snoring keeps me awake.
We get into Melbourne, find the Toyota’s head office, park the truck and make it to Melbourne airport about 40 minutes before the flight is scheduled to leave. We get our tickets and get to the gate just as the flight commences boarding – talk about cutting it fine.
The plan is for me to fly back in on Wednesday and get the car from Toyota to the Melbourne Convention Centre (Jeff’s Shed as it is known by the locals) and onto the Toyota stand. With Gonz busy at work and stuck in Brisbane until the weekend, I flew back to Melbourne and with Ian Smith’s help we got the car onto the Toyota stand and gave it its final detail. Now if you have never been involved in the set-up of a major trade show it has to be seen to be believed.
The game plan was that our TRD Toyota was on a delivery schedule thad had to be delivered at the appropriate time to
avoid conflict in the delivery dock but also inside the hall as not only Toyota was finishing building its stand but all the other manufacturers were hard at it as well. It was a real challenge just to keep the dust off the car particularly as the construction crew put our TRD Toyota onto the turntable then proceeded to finish the stand around it. Because our car was at the head of the stand we were the last Toyota in and it basically took them another day or so to put on the finishing touches.
Well, after the Brisbane International Motor Show, the Melbourne International Motor Show (MIMS) was a whole new level. I was blown away with the size of the stand and the theme of the stand was “We Race, We Learn, You Win”, which pretty much sums up why Toyota are in motorsports. The stand was divided into three sections. The “We Race” section had our TRD Toyota on a turntable at the front of the stand, surrounded by the new TRD Aurion road car and the soon to be unveiled at the show the fabulous TRD Hi-Lux. Also on the stand is the TRD Aurion Targa Tasmania car, Neal Bates rally TRD Corolla and the Toyota F-1 car. A pretty impressive lineup for the – “We Race” section.
At the other end is the “We Learn” display. For this Toyota had flown out a concept Hybrid sports car, the FT-HS and what a work of art this hand built car is. Surrounding the FT-HS are a number of Toyota Prius’.
The “You Win” section is in the middle of the stand and features the current Toyota range. I am sure that you will understand how proud I was that the Ultimate Motorsports TRD Toyota was a major feature of the Toyota display.
With every major car company going all out the show as a whole was very impressive, now I might be biased, but the Toyota stand was streets ahead of the rest.
The MIMS opened on the Friday and for the first half of the day is closed to the general public and is designed to allow industry journalists and the general media to take in all of the new vehicles without distractions. Gonz flew in on Thursday night and with Smithy and myself we look the part in our Ultimate Motorsports team uniforms. Glen Ridge is the MC and leads this media circus of about 100 journalists around each stand. The Toyota launch was one of the first at about 8 o’clock in the morning.
Dave Buttner, Toyota Director of Sales and Marketing took the microphone and discussed Toyota’s strategy for the
coming year. He made a special point to thank us for having the car as the headline of Toyota’s stand. Then he unveiled the new TRD Hi-Lux to the media. Finally, together with Neil Bates, Coral Taylor and Simon and Sue Evans from the Toyota Rally team, we retrieved from the back of the TRD Hi-Lux the AFL footballs that it was packed with and threw them out into the crowd. Then it was answering questions from the media about our TRD Toyota, as well as the questions from other car manufacturers about the Pro FX concept. Of course we used this as an opportunity to try to get them involved in Drag Racing and particularly Pro FX.
The show proper opened about lunch time and the crowds started to roll in. You can say what you like about the Sydney Brisbane Melbourne rivalry, but people who live in Melbourne really support their sport and entertainment. The crowds hit and simply didn’t stop. The idea was for us to do a 1 hour autograph session each day of both weekends. After 2 hours we were still signing autographs and fielding the obvious question of when is proper drag racing coming back to Melbourne? We wish we knew as its up to the Victorian Government to give approval to fund a new facility similar to what the NSW and WA governments have done.
Over the course of our time there we gave out around 5,000 handout cards and won over a whole new range of fans. It
was a time to also catch up with some old friends such as Holden Motorsport PR guru and drag racing enthusiast Gerald McDornan. What a blast.
The best part of the post show reports was that the Ultimate Motorsports TRD Toyota was the most recognised vehicle on the whole Toyota stand.
I feel that with everything we have done in motor racing, the Melbourne International motor show ranks up there as one of the best experiences I have ever done – a huge deal
