Toyota flying car to light Olympic flame

The Japanese engineer who gave the world the Toyota 86 and born-again Toyota Supra is the man behind the ambitious plan to light the Olympic flame with a flying car in 2020.

Toyota is the global automotive sponsor for the 2020 Olympic Games but company chief, Akio Toyoda, intends to make it much more than a ride-and-drive partnership in the way that Kia currently backs the Australian Open tennis tournament or Holden once supported the Australian Olympic team with its 'Golden Holden' program in the 1990s.

The Japanese car-maker has already confirmed its backing for Cartivator, a start-up company in the drone world and provider of Toyota’s airborne technology for the Olympics, but not the involvement of its superstar engineer Tetsuya Tada.

Now, as the countdown to the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics on July 24, 2020 gets serious, carsales.com.au can exclusively confirm a Tada plan that was hatched just over three years ago.

As he visited Australia for the unveiling of a Toyota 86 Shooting Brake concept, a car that was conceived in the Toyota design centre Down Under but never made it to production, Tada leaked details of the ambitious plan for a flying car at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

"We are preparing a surprise. Yes, I am involved," Tada revealed.

"For the Olympics, do you think we should have a car, or something else, some form of technology?"

Despite talking openly about the idea, Tada was fearful of the fallout from talking about the Olympic plan, to the point that it might cost him his job.

He had been personally tasked by Akio Toyoda, who had previously put him in charge of the landmark 86 coupe program.

Now, with the Olympics much closer to reality, Toyota’s sports car chief is slightly more open and has loosened the lid on some of the secrecy.

"Nothing is impossible," Tada says, without confirming a flying car -- only a leap into the unknown and synergies with the drone program.

"Do you know ‘Monkey Magic’ from Japan? How he can jump in a cloud and be taken anywhere?

"How would you like something like that? Mobility like that."

And that’s it, for now at least.