Toyota Embarks on a Four-Place Single, Has Yet to Make Market Entry Decision

Japan's Toyota Motor has launched a full-scale research and development effort to develop a certifiable prototype for a four-place, piston-powered light aircraft.

Dubbed the Toyota Advanced Aircraft, the plane will be constructed entirely of composite media. The R&D project is being conducted under the auspices of Toyota Motor Sales, the automaker's U.S. subsidiary, and is headquartered in the Toyota Technical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena.

Toyota has been studying U.S. general aviation manufacturing for several years. The Advanced Aircraft project is believed to be the culmination of considerable market and technical research conducted by the company and its contractors.

In the early 1990s, Toyota developed in partnership with Hamilton Standard an aviation version of its Lexus luxury car engine, and flew the aluminum-block V-8 in a test bed built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites at Mojave, Calif. Although the twin-turbocharged, FADEC-equipped engine received FAA type certification, Toyota shelved the project when it determined that an insufficient market existed to recoup its development costs and generate a profit.

"That project is gone," spokeswoman Nancy Hubbell said of the stillborn Lexus V-8. She affirmed, however, that the Toyota Advanced Aircraft is definitely to be powered by a reciprocating engine, and she said there is no connection between the Scaled Composites test bed and the new aircraft Toyota is considering now.

Emphasizing that there are as yet no plans to market a production version of the Advanced Aircraft, Hubbell said Toyota committed itself to the development project "to see if [the airplane] is something that's right for Toyota.

"We definitely do not want to create the impression that it's a done deal," she said. The R&D effort is, rather, primarily a feasibility study to determine whether the aircraft as conceived would be marketable. But Hubbell conceded that Toyota planned to hire as many as 40 engineers to work on the R&D effort.

The company tipped its hand on the Advanced Aircraft Project via a recruiting ad that appeared in the employment section of the September 13 edition of the Los Angeles Times. The display ad, run under Toyota's logo, was titled "General Aviation Airplane Design" and began, "First cars, then boats, now airplanes. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., is diversifying. We need your help to create the Toyota Advanced Aircraft and secure FAA type certification of a four-place composite airplane."

In the ad Toyota said it was looking for engineers in the following areas: aerodynamics, airframe design, electrical, materials, mechanical, powerplant, and stress analysis. "All positions will participate in relevant FAA certification testing and documentation," the text concluded.

Hubbell said both fixed- and retractable-gear versions of the Advanced Aircraft would be developed and that the airplanes would be equipped with "advanced avionics." She claimed ignorance of the exact avionics setup, as well as of the aircraft's configuration and performance goals, but said that an objective of the program would be to develop a product that would be "competitive in price with a Cessna 172." Asked about program schedules, she said the R&D effort was a "three-year project."

Why would Toyota, one of the world's most successful manufacturers of mass-produced automobiles, contemplate an assault on the relatively small general aviation market? "Hiroshi Okuda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., has established a goal that 10 percent of total sales will derive from non-automotive sources by 2005," Hubbell answered.

The Advanced Aircraft Project falls into that category, she said, noting that Toyota also markets industrial equipment like forklifts and construction machinery, as well as a recreational ski boat, "and provides telecommunications services in Japan."

By David Esler