Yuki Togo.

A sleek-looking model airplane sits on Yuki Togo's desk. He adores it, and that's understandable.

Togo, Toyota Motor Corp.'s top executive in America, hopes to turn this prototype into a production aircraft some day. That would be a bold move by the world's No. 3 automaker into a new market.

The dream, however, says less about the conservative $71 billion-in-sales multinational than it does about Togo the man.

The spunky private pilot, scuba diver and former race-car driver who once got fired for punching his boss' boss at another Japanese conglomerate, managed to land an ordinary sales job at Toyota 30 years ago and hold on for a ride to the top. Today he's the president and chief executive of Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. That's a $17 billion-in-revenues empire of auto sales and related businesses, like distribution, importing, exporting and credit.

Togo says he spends about half his time visiting the field operations, a high percentage for a big-time CEO who's also 67. He seems a rather restless executive, but that may be good for Toyota's USA arm during these dull sales days.

His organization must even more deftly manage the flow of cars, and especially ideas, between Toyota City, Japan, and its independent dealers in America, including 71 in L.A. County. They are struggling back to life after a dismal year that admittedly hit many other automakers even worse.

This and other factors have changed the nature of car retailing, forcing some to offer bigger perks, sell at auto malls or post fixed sticker prices on cars and fire their sales staff.

The samurai history buff also needs to help his Tokyo bosses deal with protectionists in Washington who have the willies this presidential-election year.

His game plan is not intellectual.

"In the business world, one plus one is not always two," asserts Togo. "It's sometimes zero, sometimes three," he says, explaining his philosophy that profit springs from more good image, good people skills and guts.

As for image, Togo pushed Tokyo to develop the luxury-car Lexus division in the 1980s. "The baby-boomer, luxury-car buyers are so sophisticated that they needed a separate marketing strategy, service and sales" staffs, says Togo, even though conventional thinking said it was more simple to just build fancier Toyotas. Lexus was launched in 1989 and has successfully appealed to snootier American buyers. Togo knew from childhood, when he admired GIs driving big cars in post-war Japan, that image is indelible.

As for good people skills, Togo promoted husky, boy-next-door-looking Jeffrey A. Smith to be his chief of staff and liaison to business and political bigwigs. But don't think Smith is prized just for his American face. The 18-year Toyota veteran speaks fluent Japanese, ran Toyota's Washington lobby and spearheaded its founding of a manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Ky. Smith, 44, handled the Kentucky community and Togo "really sold the idea" to Tokyo, says Smith.

As for guts, Togo can make a case. He says he was spoiled by his parents and their rich household and spent his boyhood "always fighting." But thanks to his father's fooling around with a geisha, Togo admits, his chances were ruined for entry to the Japan naval academy. His grandfather, a samurai of sorts, promoted courage, and the grandson took that into the first Grand Prix-style race in Japan in 1959, taking seventh place.

In Thailand, after taking his first overseas post as executive vice president of Toyota Thailand Co. in 1971, he studied Thai Bhuddism in a monastery to help endear the Thai people to him and to the auto-seller. "He shaved his head, begged barefoot in the streets, did the whole thing," says Smith.

And at his next post at Toyota Canada Inc., he flew his own Cessna in that nasty-weather country between offices, rising to president in 1980.

Perhaps risking his life taught him how to make it hard for others.

Toyota managers "are real sons-of-bitches, not fun people to work for," says an L.A. Nissan salesman familiar with Toyota policies. "You do it their way, or else," says the salesman whose views, considering his rivalry and request to not be named, must be taken with at least a pinch of salt.

What do Toyota's independent dealers say?

"Yuki's very intelligent, very aggressive, vibrant and loves the businesses, and we don't have a lot of problems with the policies coming down (from headquarters)," says one dealer.

The three Southland dealers interviewed for this profile asked that their names not be used, even though they had only praise for Togo and his Torrance operation. Perhaps that's an indication they feared even the slightest misunderstanding of their words from the big boss, but more likely it indicates mistrust of the media or, as one admitted, their extreme sensitivity to volatile public opinion towards Japanese market power today.

Sporadic "Buy American" campaigns have turned some longtime Japanese-car owners towards American brands, according to anecdotal evidence cited in major newspapers recently.

Forty-five percent of 1,776 L.A. Times poll survey respondents in February said they "generally avoid products made in Japan" when buying. That's up from 26 percent in 1985. Have these bursts of nationalism hurt Toyota's sales?

"It's not affecting us too much," says Togo, whose sales of 1.02 million vehicles last year were 3.6 percent down from 1990, still less than half the decline of American automakers.

Neutralizing American chauvinism is a top-drawer responsibility for Toyota Motor Sales.

When Togo addresses business leaders or community groups, he polishes Toyota's image and, more significantly, lays out facts: Toyota's 1,300 independent dealers and 15,000 company employees are overwhelmingly American nationals. Witness 400 workers at its Long Beach truck-bed plant, or its top executive under Togo, Executive Vice President Bob McCurry, a 28-year Chrysler veteran.

Togo has applied for permanent residency from the U.S. Immigration Service, the first step toward citizenhood. He said someday he and his wife Misako want to retire in Hawaii at a small house they own.

Toyota has boosted its purchases from U.S. producers in recent years to a projected $2.6 billion in 1992, up three-fold from 1988.

It promotes many U.S. cultural efforts, like its $1 million donation towards a custom-designed organ for the Los Angeles Music Center. Togo, who succeeded in encouraging other local Japanese executives to kick in to the Music Center, was honored by that arts bastion last month by more than 300 friends and L.A. business leaders.

Togo's Toyota hung a big placard in the Torrance headquarters lobby last month that rang out. "Welcome Black History Month Celebrants" a few feet from its two receptionists, one black and one Hispanic.

The Boy Scouts of America volunteer says his strategy to keep trade friction from hurting Toyota requires him to "be a good corporate citizen, hire Americans" and remind his critics that the Big Three in Detroit are not so domestic. They import cars partly or fully made in Mexico, Brazil, Korea, Australia and Canada, including Ford's Mercury Tracer from Mexico and GM's Pontiac LeMans from Korea.

GM beat Toyota on electric cars, at least on the announcement. GM has vowed to unveil its first electric passenger car in the mid-1990s.

Togo counters that the market is not ripe for Toyota to roll out an electric car, which he claims it already has. "If the time comes, we will expose it," he vows.

Togo reports to No. 1 in Toyota City, President Shoichiro Toyoda, and funnels back to him the grass-roots consumer wishes in America. Yet Togo's top priority is to promote the growth and profitability of his Torrance operation. That entails less visionary subjects than electric cars or airplanes, such as keeping dealers afloat in hard times.

A handful of local dealers closed recently, including franchises in Downey and Pasadena. Togo brushes aside the suggestion that Toyota dealerships are too close to each other in L.A., saying the failures were due to bad dealer management.

The only question in a recent interview that made Togo uncomfortable concerned price increases, which Toyota was preparing to announce the following day. Togo cited the corporate reason for the coming 3.2 percent hike -- to compensate for the yen's continued appreciation against the dollar.

Reports speculated that Japan's Big 5 automakers believed their self-interest dictated they cut Detroit and Washington a little slack in an election year. Togo did not deny that hypothesis, saying only, "I don't know how much political elements are involved" in the move, which resulted in adding approximately $432 to each Toyota price tag, on average, making the vehicles a bit less appealing vs. Big Three cars.

But don't expect retreat by Toyota, in any sense of the word. Asked to portray his company 10 years from now, Togo says, "Toyota will be the major automotive company worldwide."