This Toyota Century Concept Is A New Vision For Japanese Luxury

If you want a posh Toyota, you get a Lexus. But if you want a really posh Toyota, you get a Toyota Century, the company’s stately and enormous saloon car, mostly sold in Japan, where it rivals Bentleys and Rolls-Royces for the affections of VIPs and the ultra-wealthy.

That was the case for over five decades, but a couple of years ago, the Century family grew with the addition of a massive SUV, designed to take on the new breed of high-riding luxo-barges like the Bentayga and Cullinan.

Now, that family is expanding further still, as Toyota is launching Century as its own standalone brand, targeting the Asian market and sitting above Lexus in the Toyota brand hierarchy.

To spearhead that launch, it’s shown off this, a concept that blends coupe proportions with an SUV ride height to create what Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda calls “an endeavor to shape the next one hundred years from Japan.” No pressure, then.

We don’t have much in the way of info on the car – not even a proper name – but it blends the boxy styling we know and love from the Century saloon with a coupe silhouette that’s going to draw inevitable comparisons to a certain Jaguar Type-00. No rear windscreen, either.

That’s paired with funky dual sliding doors, which give access to a plush cabin with a funky seating layout. There’s a single front seat for the driver, who steers with a yoke and appears to be sealed off by beams of light emanating from the centre console.

Then, sitting at roughly their seven o’clock is a sole passenger, who gets near-infinite legroom thanks to the lack of a front passenger seat. It’s an odd setup, but one that makes a surprising amount of sense in creating a coupe that someone could still be chauffeur-driven in.

The cockpit is full of other neat details too, like an umbrella that stows next to the passenger (insert Skoda Superb reference here), and a small, watch-like analogue clock in the centre of the dash.

We have no clue if Toyota plans to put anything like this into production, and if it does, it’ll almost certainly be a) quite toned-down and b) not sold in Europe. Still, as a statement of intent for Century’s future as a brand, it’s quite something, isn’t it?