“Have you got enough legroom in the back?” asks Sir Paul Smith from the driver’s seat. Across from him, Holger Hampf, head of design at Mini, cracks down the window. Outside, the scenery is unusual: we are surrounded by an excited circle of Japanese fans, camera crews and automotive experts, all of them as enraptured by the car we are sitting in as by the designers in its front seats.

Worth around $119 billion in 2025, the Japanese car market is the world’s third largest. At the country’s biggest motor show in Tokyo last week, multiple headline-making new vehicles were announced by domestic superstar manufacturers including Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan. Yet the only launch that attracted lines of selfie-seeking fans and prompted members of the audience to (very politely) cheer was

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