The Automotive Council in Tokyo, which celebrated its 10th year in 2026, operates on a different principle entirely. It exists to bring out the cars people actually care about — the rare ones, the ones that have been quietly living in collections, the ones that cost more than a house and have never been driven in the rain. Walking its halls at the Makuhari Messe is less a visit to a car show and more an unscheduled education in everything you thought you knew about automotive history.
The floors this year contained, among other things: a Ferrari 250 GT Short Wheelbase, possibly the most beautiful object Italy has ever exported; the Ferrari GTO from the 1980s, the original hypercar before anyone had invented the word; a Lancia Delta restomod built by rally world champion Miki Biasion; a Singer DLS; a Prodrive P25; a Gunther Werks 993; an F40 reskinned in LM specification; two Lexus LFAs; a Bugatti Chiron on California dealer plates; a 1929 Invicta four-and-a-half litre; and, with deeply satisfying incongruity, a tiny Lancia Thema 832, powered by a transversely-mounted Ferrari V8, selling for 4.68 million yen — roughly $30,000. Your move, dealers of Europe.
But the most significant thing at the show was not the trophy cars or the record-breaking restorations. It was a collection of engine parts, dashboard assemblies, and rubber seals on a stand at the Toyota booth. And a similar display at Honda’s. Because what both companies were demonstrating, quietly and without fanfare, was something that should make every enthusiast feel slightly more optimistic about the future of the cars they love: Japan’s major manufacturers are, systematically and seriously, keeping their classics alive.
Toyota’s GR Heritage Parts programme, which began in 2020 and has expanded steadily since, now covers the AE86 Corolla, the A70 and A80 Supra, the 2000GT, and multiple generations of Land Cruiser. In 2025 alone, a total of 14 new parts rolled out for AE86 Corollas, A70 and A80 Supras, and Land Cruisers across the 40, 60, 70, and 80 series. At the Automotive Council, Toyota showed reproduced cylinder heads, cylinder blocks for the 4A-GE engine, and a newly manufactured AE86 dashboard — a part particularly vulnerable to sun damage, cracking and shrinking over decades, and essentially unobtainable through conventional channels.
Honda, not to be outdone, launched Honda Heritage Works in April 2026 with rather more ambition. The programme offers reproduction parts on a global basis to replace discontinued components, as well as a full restoration service in Japan, starting with the first-generation NSX at its Takanezawa facility in Tochigi — the birthplace of the original car. The parts programme will eventually expand to other sporty models, with the S2000, Civic Type R, and Prelude among the likely candidates. The restoration service offers two tiers: a targeted overhaul of drivetrain, suspension, or interior items, or a ground-up Total Restoration that uses Honda Heritage Parts to return the car to factory standard. Nissan, through its NISMO Heritage programme, has also been manufacturing new parts including engine blocks for Skyline GT-Rs. Mazda was the first to initiate such a programme, initially for the NA MX-5 and the RX-7.
Taken together, this represents something genuinely new. It was once the exclusive preserve of exotic marques to offer factory-backed restoration programmes. When a vintage Ferrari reliably appreciates to seven figures, spending serious money maintaining it is commercially rational. A 1993 Honda NSX or a 1986 Toyota AE86 was never meant to be a museum piece. It was meant to be driven to the track on a Saturday morning and back home in time for lunch. That these cars are now worth preserving with factory precision — that Honda has reopened a dedicated facility and Toyota is casting new engine blocks — tells you something important about how the collector car world has shifted.
The Automotive Council itself is a product of this shift. Started in 2016 to give Japan’s considerable but scattered community of classic car enthusiasts a shared event, it has grown into something that genuinely rewards careful attention. Not everything on display is for sale. Not everything for sale is expensive. The Aston Martin Virage shooting brake from 1990, an enormous and spectacularly awkward coachbuilt estate, was asking 18.6 million yen. The TVR Griffith from 1999 — same age as the R34 GT-R, and considerably more interesting at a party — was offered at 7.5 million. The point is not the prices. The point is that cars like this exist in Japan, are being preserved in Japan, and are being celebrated in Japan with a seriousness that much of the rest of the world could learn from.
The Japanese have always understood something about objects that Western consumer culture has been slower to grasp: that something made well, maintained properly, and used with respect does not depreciate into worthlessness. It accumulates meaning. The fact that Toyota is now casting new engine blocks for a forty-year-old hatchback, and Honda has renamed a facility after a thirty-year-old sports car, suggests that message is finally reaching the boardrooms as well as the workshops.
Pass the parts catalogue. Some of us have cars to maintain.
