As you probably are aware, I now own a Yaris. And today, I got surprised when Toyota UK on Twitter linked in a tribute to their Corolla AE86 on their Twitter feed, namely the Corolla GT86, although disappointingly, there was no Eurobeat on the trailer.

For those of you who don’t know, the AE86 is the car used by Fujiwara Takumi in the Initial D anime series, a young man doing early morning tofu deliveries down a winding mountain pass, learning how to drift as he went, and minimising the jerky movements of the car, since tofu is an extremely fragile food.

Toyota made reference to this also in my Yaris by adding an app to the car called “A Glass of Water” which simulates having a glass of water in the car, and when you finish your journey, it tells you how much water you would have spilt had you had a real glass of water in your car.

Takumi’s father used this same technique while training him. Putting a glass of water in his cup holder and Takumi would try to minimise the amount of spillage during his delivery run.

I am impressed how Toyota have been embracing the references to their cars in the anime, and when I mentioned this on my office’s slack, surprisingly some people also got the reference ^_^