How we laughed at the Japanese. We ridiculed their humourless engineers, with white coats and polyester trousers. We scoffed at their boring little cars with fake-wood dashboards and engines that sounded as if they were made of plastic. Well, we interrupt history – and the recession – to bring you the man who is shaping the future of motoring. He’s Japanese. And he likes a laugh. ‘My dream car is a Lamborghini. If I won the lottery, I’d buy one,’ said Yutaka Matsumoto. The tall, 50-year-old general manager of strategy at Toyota is driving around his firm’s headquarters in down-town Tokyo in a supercar for the 21st century. It’s not a sporty Italian, but an affordable four-door saloon that offers emission-free – and conscience-free – motoring. ‘If I use this car for commuting in Tokyo, I can travel at up to 60mph but there are no emissions whatsoever,’ he said. Matsumoto is behind the wheel of Toyota’s first plug-in hybrid car. It has an electric and a petrol engine but differs from the Prius – the popular hybrid Matsumoto’s team also developed – because its battery can be recharged from a normal socket in less than two […]