Soft Showing From Ford

If you'd gone to the Ford presentation expecting anything very exciting, you might have come away feeling pretty disappointed. The Blue Oval may sell cars in Japan, but its presence at the show is very low key indeed.

And while they revealed two "new" cars, neither of them is likely to grab any headlines, let alone car-of-the-show awards. They had a dab at glitzing up the unveils, with dancing girls in sawn-off denims and boys in urban grunge, body-popping and break-dancing for all they were worth; and even those were marginally more exciting than either of the cars - even if one of those was a "special" edition of the "iconic" Mustang.

Called the Mustang GT California Special, it will be available to order on the Japanese market, online, from Friday the 26th - with deliveries starting in what they describe as "very limited numbers" from the second quarter of 2008.

But even with a Mustang you can only get so excited about a mustard yellow paint-job with black racer stripes, classic Halibrand-type five-spoke alloy wheels and a few minor body changes. The 4.6 V8 is the same as normal, the running gear appears to be the same as normal, the dashboard is chromed up a bit more than usual and that's about it. It would be fair to say that the reaction it raised was just about proportionate to the effort they seemed to have made.

And then there was the "show car" - the Escape Adventure, "styled and built for the Tokyo Motor Show." The changes over the production Escape might be described as limited: Paul Gibson, Ford chief designer, Asia Pacific and Africa says "our goal from the start was to accentuate the Escape's on-road presence with styling changes that would enhance its appeal and build on its SUV heritage."

And they did that by adding a three-bar grille with silver-accented air intakes, new projector-beam headlights to visually give "a wider, more aggressive horizontal stance," two larger satin chrome-accented triangular intakes in the lower half of the fascia to help give a more masculine look, and silver intakes and side view mirrors with integrated signal repeaters, to contrast with the new Fire red pearl paint.

There were LED rear lights, too, offset 18-inch alloy wheels, and (no kidding) the aerial was "relocated from the front right-hand fender to the roof, a simple styling change that so effectively improves aesthetics." If they gave themselves all day to create it it's hard to imagine what they would have done with the time they had left over in the afternoon. Not the most exciting stand at the show.