The new Lexus corporate face will be appearing on the newest Lexus ES – a startling trend for a vehicle so conservative it makes Mitt Romney look like a chaps-wearing “lifestyle” devotee.

A spy shot out of China shows a vehicle purported to the 2013 Lexus ES250 – a smaller displacement model similar to the world market GS250. The car’s interior is also said to look more like the GS, rather than the simple but elegant Camry-esque interior. The addition of a whole suite of tinfotainment features like Toyota’s Entune may be complex for a certain segment of ES drivers who are well into their “retired in Florida” years, and who rely on their grandchildren for tech support. A family friend  in their 70′s recently opted for a Lexus LS460 rather than purchase a Lincoln MKT Ecoboost, as they found the tech features of the Lincoln distracting and hard to use. Imagine what a “Greatest Generation” tech backlash would look like.

Hammered by the tsunami, the Thai flood and a monster yen, the Japanese car industry is looking back at one of the worst years in modern history. Amazingly, Japan’s top three, Toyota, Nissan and Honda survived the year intact, and are looking at a profit.

Of all Japanese automakers, Mazda is bleeding the most. 70 percent of Mazda’s production is  in Japan, and 90 percent is for export. Mazda predicts that it will close the fiscal year on March 31 with a net loss of 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion.) This will be the fourth year of losses for Mazda. On top of all the disasters, Mazda has to digest a painful divorce from Ford which cut into overseas production capacities. In the words of Mazda,

“Its financial standing has temporarily worsened due to rapid changes in its business environment, including the continuing sharp appreciation of the yen since 2011, the unstable economic conditions such as the financial crisis in European countries, as well as large-scale disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake and the floods in Thailand.”

How is Mazda going to survive this?

It will sell shares instead of cars.

In order to finance urgent investments, which target 50 percent overseas production by 2016, Mazda announced today that it wants to raise up to $2 billion via a public share offering. This means a haircut for current shareholders to the tune of a massive 69 percent dilution, Reuters says.

Some of the money will go towards building factories in Mexico and Russia, most of it will be spent in Japan. While other automakers are forging alliances to share the cost of research in new and untested technologies, Mazda fights alone. It is betting on optimizing the internal combustion engine with its Skyactiv technology, an exercise in diminishing returns.

50 percent overseas production by 2016 are widely regarded as too little, too late. Nissan and Honda only have 24 percent of global production  in Japan, Toyota has 44 percent of its global production in Japan. All of them would like to lower exposure to the yen as quickly as possible.

I received a press release from the Atlanta Motorsports Group this morning talking about their 2012 Speed World Challenge program. Press releases from SWC and Grand-Am teams usually boil down to one or two things: announcing recent race wins and/or crowing over the “signing” of drivers whose MASSIVE TALENT just happens to be accompanied by a half-million dollar budget courtesy of indulgent parents, a well-respected practice in the field of orthodontia, or smuggling bales of Acapulco Gold into short airfields in Texas.

This one was no different, except it had something in it about “MX-5 Cup Champion Michael Cooper.”

Wait a minute…

Long-time readers will recall how, confident in my ability to beat Maximum Bob by five or so seconds per lap, I stroked along and took an 0.7 second beating in the CTS-V Challenge by a mystery kid with a BMW M3. My impression of Michael Cooper at the time: nice kid, rich parents, Jersey Shore cast extra. To all of the above, you can now add considerable driving talent.

Fresh out of the CTS-V Challenge, Michael ran Mazdaspeed MX-5 Cup in 2010, winning pole position in his first race and picking up the series championship in 2011. He also drove with known Grand-Am Continental Challenge overdogs Freedom Autosport in 2011. For 2012, he will be in a Speed World Challenge Mazdaspeed3, driving with Atlanta Motorsports Group and contending for the series championship. Thus the press release, thus my surprise this morning.

Winning an MX-5 Cup season is no easy feat. There’s some funding required — I would guess somewhere in the range of $150,000 per season, assuming you don’t damage the car too much — but the majority of the drivers are very well-coached and quite talented. Speed World Challenge and the Continental Challenge are a step up from that in terms of cost and competition level, but anybody who expects to win either series in 2012 would be a fool to underestimate Michael.

Ask me how I know.