Tokyo Auto Salon 2025: Everything To Look Out For

If January’s getting you down, then one surefire way of perking yourself up as a car person is to take a look at the yearly offerings at the Tokyo Auto Salon. The less serious, more enthusiast-geared of Tokyo’s two motor shows always brings a few treats, even if most of them tend to be limited to the Japanese market.

This year’s no different, with all the major Japanese manufacturers, plus plenty of tuning companies and a few other OEMs, bringing along some special stuff. Read on for our highlights of the 2025 show.

Daihatsu

Daihatsu, a brand whose presence in Europe we miss more every day, is always a highlight of TAS, usually bringing some madcap concepts and production cars. This year is no different.

As well as a smattering of kitted-out kei vans and trucks, it’ll be bringing the rally-prepared Copen that we recently saw clawing its way around the stages of Rally Japan. Most exciting to us, though, is the Mira e:S GR Sport Concept. This is a concept for a hot version of Daihatsu’s long-running Mira kei car (briefly sold over here in the ’90s as the Cuore), although it looks production-ready to us.

It gets some cute but aggro body styling, sports seats, a turbo and a five-speed manual, although because it’s a kei car, it’s still limited to 660cc and 63bhp. And if you’re wondering, yes, that is Toyota’s GR Sport badge – Toyota now entirely owns Daihatsu, and already uses GR badging on a sportier version of the Copen.

Honda

Honda’s confirmed that a prototype of the new Prelude will be on display, likely giving us a firmer idea of what the final production car will look like (although we’re expecting it to be very similar to the concept we’ve already seen). Set to be sold in Europe and the US as well as Japan, the new coupe will feature a hybrid powertrain and a drive mode that simulates a proper gearbox.

It’s also bringing along something called the Civic Type R Racing Black Package. We don’t have any more info on this yet, but the name suggests plenty of black accents as well as hopefully some track-oriented performance tweaks.

Meanwhile, Honda-affiliated tuner Mugen is bringing its own take on the Civic Type R, a production-ready version of the ‘Group B’ package it showed off as a concept last year. It throws in a whole lot of aggressive aero and lightweight materials, plus uprated brakes and dampers but, as far as we can tell, no extra power.

A rendering of the Honda stand also hints at the brand’s renewed F1 efforts getting some attention.

Hyundai

Hyundai has used TAS to show off the Ioniq 5 N DK Edition, a special edition of its brilliant performance EV developed with input from the one and only Keiichi Tsuchiya, AKA the Drift King.

DK has worked with Hyundai to give the 5 N some chassis hardware tweaks and uprated aero, and it’ll be going on sale in limited numbers – but so far it’s only been confirmed for South Korea and Japan. In the meantime, you can read more about it here.

Liberty Walk

Nagoya-based widebody kit manufacturer Liberty Walk has never been one to shy away from fettling cars that other companies wouldn’t dare touch for fear of inciting a riot, and its stand at TAS 2025 will be no different.

It’s gotten its hands on a Lamborghini Miura, and will be giving its interpretation of the legendary ’60s supercar a full reveal on 10 January.

Mitsubishi

Mitsubishi may have disappeared from the UK, but like Daihatsu, it’s still worth a look at what the brand’s bringing along. These include modified versions of the Triton pickup truck (one of which has a DJ booth built into the bed), Outlander, and Delica off-road van thing. The Outlander – named the Night Seeker – is particularly curious because it’s apparently been inspired by the Metal Gear Solid series.

It’s also showing off its Triton rally raid truck, as well as two of the vehicles designed to support it on its long-distance motorsport exploits: a full-size Delica and, rather delightfully, a Delica Mini kei car.

Nissan

We’re not sure Nissan will be revealing anything brand new, but there’ll still likely be plenty of eyes on its stand. Much of that'll be down to the controversial presence of an electric-swapped R32 Skyline GT-R. It’ll also be showing off the North American-spec version of the 2025 Z, complete with its nostalgic new Bayside Blue colour choice.

We’re also promised a talk celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Nismo performance division, so hopefully, Nissan will bring out some rather special stuff from its heritage collection.

Perhaps most interesting, though, are the concepts created by students at Nissan’s Automobile Technical College. The NEO Skyline takes a V35 Skyline coupe (which you might know better as the Infiniti G35) and grafts on a retro-style body inspired by the second-gen ‘Kenmeri’ Skyline GT-R.

The Z Lealia takes a second-gen Stagea and mates it with the front end of the new Z and the rear section of a Leaf to create a kind of Z estate, while the Bluebird Kiwami takes a 1980s U11-series Bluebird and gives it a mega-boxy new widebody kit.

Subaru

Our original version of this preview cautioned you not to get your hopes up for a new WRX STI from Subaru. Subaru promptly showed up with a new WRX STI.

To be fair, you still shouldn’t get your hopes up. Not only is it a Japan-only limited edition, but the WRX S210 STI has less power than the old WRX STI and a CVT gearbox. Oh dear. If you enjoy being disappointed, you can read more about it here.

It's also brought along the Subaru BRZ STI Sport Purple Edition. You'll never guess what colour it is. Alongside that will be its Japanese Super GT GT300-spec BRZ race car, a hydrogen WRX racer and its entry into the NBR Challenge. Oh, and some other Japanese-market 'STI Performance' trims which bring the badge without the, well... performance.

TOM’s

Long-standing Toyota tuner TOM’s doesn’t seem to be bringing anything as exciting to TAS 2025 as the awesome restomodded A80 Supra it showed off last year, but it still has some fresh offerings to bring to the table.

Unsurprisingly, these hinge around two stalwarts of Toyota’s more enthusiast-geared lineup, the GR Yaris and J250 Land Cruiser, both of which get a host of new cosmetic enhancements. Also getting the treatment is the Crown Sport, a Japanese-market mid-sized SUV. It’s not clear if any of the trio have any performance tweaks, but given TOM’s’s history (wow, that’s a difficult name to make possessive), it wouldn’t surprise us.

Toyota

Toyota hasn’t confirmed this, but Japanese publication Best Car has suggested multiple times that we could finally see the new Celica at Tokyo Auto Salon, or at least a concept previewing it. Rumours of the compact coupe’s return have been swirling for a while now and were recently effectively confirmed by a Toyota exec.

Even if we don’t see a new Celica, though, Toyota unsurprisingly has plenty to shout about. Much of this comes in the form of a prototype GR Yaris with a mid-mounted, 2.0-litre turbo motor. Yep, a mid-engined Yaris.

So far, it’s only been confirmed as an entrant in Japan’s Super Taikyu racing series, but Toyota’s doing this to “further explore the potential of the GR Yaris.” Sounds like it could be thinking about a production version, then. More pertinently, this engine’s said to be at the heart of the heavily rumoured new MR2 – is this secretly a prototype for that? Read more here.

Other Yarisy goodness includes a racing version of the GR that Toyota’s taking to the Nürburgring 24 Hours this year, and a concept showing a new factory aero package that could be offered to customers in the future.

The N24 race provides the main theme of Toyota’s stand, with exhibits of several of the cars it’s entered in the past, and there’s also a section showing off customisation parts for the new Land Cruiser.

Toyota's also brought a strange RAV4 concept called the Dark Side Performance, with flared arches and some very TRON-ish blue accent lights.