Meeting with Mark Roden

I MANAGED to sneak the Audi into the beautifully manicured acres of Toyota Towers today.

It’s only a short 12-mile drive there from the Business Car Manager offices. But inside the Audi A6 it was all cossetting loveliness, from the tactile feel of the leather on the steering wheel to the direct action of the gearshift and the amber light quality of the door mirror indicators, so luminescent in the half gloom of such a dull autumn day.

Audi calls this haptics. Making what you touch feel good. And it works. It makes driving the car so much more involving, personal.

Back to Toyota. The HQ is impressive, situated up high with a lovely waterfall cascading down a vertical black marble slab, a combination of industrial tech with a softer space-like pod jutting out.

A bit like Toyota cars in many ways: fantastically engineered, but rather lacking in emotion. Unlike Mark Roden. Who beamed a welcoming smile despite having spent the best part of the morning stuck in a traffic jam on the M40 and still apologising for his lateness.

Mark is the new man at Toyota charged with taking the car maker to both the big business fleets, and the small business owner. Except this time he also has the responsibility of the luxury arm Lexus, too – the first time both roles have been combined. But with 15 years in a variety of jobs at both Toyota and Lexus, Mark is well-positioned to do both.

“Combining Toyota and Lexus gives us different niches in the markets,” explained Mark, “especially for small businesses. In the future we’ll see Lexus go more towards hybrid. It’s already a trend we’re picking up, especially business owners with the new RX450h – it has 299bhp, yet CO2 emissions of 148g/km and fuel economy of 44.8mpg. It combines luxury performance with good underlying business performance.

“But Lexus won’t just be top end. We expect to have a £20,000 premium hatchback by 2011, which again will be a hybrid.”