Paralympic & Olympic Stars at Toyota event

More than 4,000 dealers attended Toyota’s annual event in Las Vegas, where their CEO Akio Toyoda himself showed up.

To emphasise the manufacturer’s commitment to the USA market, they invited athletes of the U.S. Snowboard Team to ski down virtual tracks of the next Olympic destination — PyeongChang.

Each of them started off at the Endless slope to warm up and get used to the simulator, and then hopped off to an exact copy a PyeongChang track, which was branded for Toyota. Once again, we saw an evidence of how close the simulator is to the real thing: alpine athletes only needed a couple of minutes to pick it up, while half-pipers told us the race was a bit of a challenge.

Dozens of guests were lucky to repeat that during the day, re-living the joy of an athlete who finishes a demanding track.

“Borders are where the actual ends, but also where the imagination and the story begins."

Our special guest, Amy Purdy, is world-famous for her bronze Olympic medal of 2014 in snowboard cross, as well as snowboarding, acting, modelling and dancing with both of her feet amputated. She started a charity organisation called Adaptive Action Sports and has been Toyota’s brand ambassador for years. Having talked to her for 20 seconds, we knew for sure that all of her countless motivational speeches were as sincere as an FAT device, and she’s a kind and incredibly passionate person. No surprise she finished our race with a great result.

First considering it for one event, Toyota eventually bought the President Lux simulator to keep in their warehouse in California and take it to all of their major events. To make it possible, we’ll train all of their team to use the machine and instruct guests.