It was with great sadness that we learned earlier this year of the
death of Lexus's chief test driver, Hiromu Naruse
, in a collision near the Nurburgring.
Naruse, who had a hand in almost every crucial sports car that Toyota has thus far produced and who put more miles in on the Nordschleife than any other Japanese driver, is sorely missed by all those who new him - and by ToMoCo itself.
Now, Lexus has revealed this short video tribute to the man who, more than any other, shaped Toyota's and Lexus's performance car history (have a look at the select roll-call of cars at 1m 02s in the video if you want proof).
We applaud the sentiment of the video, which seems to have come from the folks at Lexus's US arm, but we have to say that it smacks a bit too much of 'marketing'.
A 90-second viral video to honour a true performance car guru? Call us cynics, but somehow it doesn't seem quite right to us...