Tectonic Shift

Our biggest challenge was to forget.

Amid the clatter of shoes on the polished terminal floor of Sendai Airport, north of Tokyo, our Toyota host turns to me and says, “This place”—he glances around at the airport—“was flooded by the 2011 tsunami.” You would hardly know it, though, because the reconstruction is so thorough. In an only-in-Japan moment, we encounter a small robot directing flyers to either connecting flights or baggage claim. Dutifully listening, I turn right.

Locally, they call that 9.1 Richter-scale rupture in the ocean floor the Great East Japan Earthquake. It was the fourth most powerful movement of the earth ever recorded. The Pacific Ocean is now quietly lapping three-quarters of a mile away; Fukushima is 55 miles to the south, still burbling its radioactive brew. This is a country that united for several years to pick up the pieces of the devastation. Some parts of Japan remain shattered, but most citizens have seen a return to daily life. And for Toyota, that means staying on schedule for its most  important car, the Camry.

Tomorrow, I’ll be driving prototypes of the next-generation Camry at the Sportsland Sugo raceway, located in the hills about an hour from the city. As we walk into the evening air, it’s face-flinching cold. There’s light rain in tomorrow’s forecast. I pull my jacket’s zipper up to its top tooth and lean into the wind. I was hoping for better weather to conduct an exclusive driving evaluation of the first entirely new Camry in more than a decade. This is no routine Camry update. This is the first version begot of the crucial Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) platform. The future of the world’s largest automaker hinges on its success.