Tokyo—The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced on December 21 that it will participate in the Tokyo Auto Salon 2019 to be held January 11–13 at Makuhari Messe. The YOKOHAMA exhibit will showcase the Company’s tires and aluminum wheels.

The tire booth will introduce visitors to YOKOHAMA’s diverse lineup of tires that appeal to car hobbyists. Accordingly, the booth will have a special focus on YOKOHAMA’s hobby tires. The booth will also introduce YOKOHAMA’s high-level motor sports activities, which make important contributions to the Company’s development of technologies used in its consumer tires.

< Hobby tires>
The booth will include vehicles equipped with YOKOHAMA tires representative of four tire themes—sports, off-road, dress-up, and classic. Among these, the dress-up and classic theme tires that will be displayed are scheduled to be put on the market in 2019. The booth also will display a future concept model of the ADVAN brand’s ultimate street sports tire, the “ADVAN NEOVA”.
< Motor sports>
The YOKOHAMA exhibit will include the SF19, the new model race car to be used from 2019 in the Japanese SUPER FORMULA Championship Series, Asia’s ultimate formula racing car series, and the YOKOHAMA-sponsored KONDO Racing team machine that will compete in the 2019 Nürburgring 24-hour endurance race. A number of live talk shows featuring drivers and managers of teams participating in races and rallies will also be held at the tire booth.
In addition to hobby tires and motor sports, the booth also will display the “BluEarth-GT AE51”, a grand touring tire to be marketed from February 2019 in Japan.

The wheel booth will feature the “ADVAN Racing” brand lineup and introduce a number of new products to be unveiled in Japan for the first time. Forged models will include the “ADVAN Racing R6”, which was first unveiled at the SEMA Show in the United States in October 2018. Cast wheels will feature the “ADVAN Racing RSIII”, the new model of YOKOHAMA’s flagship model, the “ADVAN Racing RSII”. Both these new wheels will be attractively displayed on vehicles in the booth.

Yokohama Rubber has established its hobby tire strategy as one of core elements of the broader consumer tire strategy included in the Company’s three-year medium-term management plan, Grand Design 2020 (GD2020), implemented from 2018. In line with its hobby tire strategy, the Company will accelerate the development of new products and expand the size lineup of existing products suitable for use with various types of hobby vehicles, from race cars to classic cars.