When Akio Toyoda presents a new project, he likes to use big words. When Toyota Motor’s chairman introduced the new Century brand, he said at the opening of the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo this fall: “I want to build the brand so that it shares the soul of Japan and the pride of Japan with the world.” Japan has “lost its energy and dynamism. It is a heartfelt desire for world peace and an effort to shape the next hundred years from Japan,” continued the grandson of the company’s founder, who headed the board for 14 years until 2023. Behind him, an orange sports coupe flashed in the headlights: the concept car with which the industry leader wants to draw interest in its new brand. Beyond the gaudy show and the flowery words, the “Century” is one thing above all: the Japanese attempt to move into the price range above the company’s existing luxury brand Lexus. If Lexus is intended to offer a Japanese alternative to the German upper-class manufacturers Mercedes, BMW and Audi, Toyota is aiming more towards Rolls-Royce and the Volkswagen brand Bentley with the new Century brand. In Toyota’s home market, the name Century has stood for a conservative notchback sedan for almost 60 years, in which, among others, the emperor and members of the government were chauffeured. Two years ago, the Japanese launched a massive luxury SUV under the same name, with which they primarily want to reach the wealthy clientele in China. With the upgrade to an independent brand with initially three models, Toyoda wants Century to receive “a clear identity as Japan’s top offering among automobiles.” Toyota can afford to experiment At the beginning of December, the Toyota patriarch launched another attempt to attack Germany’s luxury car manufacturer. In the “Woven City,” which was built specifically for the company’s future projects at the foot of Mount Fuji, he presented three new sports car models, which the Japanese press immediately classified as competitors for Porsche, Mercedes’ sports brand AMG and Ferrari. One of the models, the GR GT, is scheduled to come onto the market around 2027. No release dates have yet been announced for the other two, a racing version of the GR GT and an electric variant of the limited-edition Lexus LFA sports car. The price of the GR GT is said to be the equivalent of around 200,000 euros. Toyota can afford to experiment. While many other classic car manufacturers such as Volkswagen are suffering from the slow transformation towards purely electric cars and the new cheap competition from China, the Japanese are once again heading for a year with record sales. The Americans’ tariffs in particular are putting pressure on profits. In the first half of the financial year alone, the additional export costs cost Toyota the equivalent of eight billion dollars. In November, the Japanese were still able to raise their net profit forecast for the year as a whole to 2.9 trillion yen (15.8 billion euros).E-cars as mass-produced goods that can be copied?At the same time, the new desire for luxury should keep Toyota at a distance from the new competitors from China, who are making mass business more difficult for the group with their cheap electric cars, not only in the Middle Kingdom itself, but throughout Asia. Chairman of the Board of Directors Toyoda said in Woven City in October that the simpler design of electric cars would mean that vehicles could become commodities – i.e. mass products that are easy to replicate and have no great value.More on the subjectBy introducing Century as its own brand in the so-called “ultra-luxury segment”, as brand board member Simon Humphries calls it, Lexus should at the same time be given more freedom for innovative concepts. Toyota’s own brand has so far been responsible for imitating Mercedes and BMW, as Toyoda said. It should now lead “away from imitation and towards improvement and innovation”. Brand boss Humphries showed what that could look like: an extra large van that has two normal wheels at the front and four small wheels at the back. Lexus is trying to establish a minibus in the luxury class. Humphries sees this as the next step after the classic sedan has been largely replaced by the SUV in recent years. The new Lexus with six wheels should offer customers in the luxury class something that he describes as “truly priceless”: freedom and space to develop.
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