The new Toyota Century is coming, the length of the car is more than 5 meters 2, the shape is domineering, can it be comparable to Cullinan?
In the history of luxury car manufacturing of non-luxury car brands, the most famous is the million-dollar luxury car Phaeton once built by Volkswagen. But in fact, Toyota also launched a full-size luxury sedan known as "Japan's Rolls-Royce" in 1967, and has been continuously updated in the past few decades, but because it once focused on the local market like Hongqi, it is not as well-known as the Phaeton, and this car is the Toyota Century. Recently, Toyota has updated its lineup for this nameplate, and we can call this update "Shangxin", because the unprecedented Toyota Century SUV has officially arrived.
In June this year, Toyota announced the existence of the Century SUV through a teaser image, saying that the model will be sold as a supplement to the Toyota Century in the market, and its overall cost will be more than three times that of the base model of the Toyota Land Cruiser (that is, "Land Patrol") of the whole series, and it will also be the most luxurious full-size SUV ever built by the Toyota brand.
In terms of appearance, Toyota Century SUV will be available in two different decorative versions, in the case of sharing the standardized shield grille and matrix layout LED headlights, the lower surround of the vehicle will produce a clear difference, and the luxury version will achieve visual advanced and functional anti-scratch sports protection with a more comprehensive wide metal; The Sport version, on the other hand, adds a carbon fibre material to the Sport Surround, which is not completely integrated into the lower edge of the body panel, but adds an additional independent kit to the lower Sport Encirclement.
Similarly, two different sets of trim will extend to the side and rear, while in addition to the sporty side skirts, a retractable running board will be added to the side, which will protrude from the inside of the chassis when the side sliding doors are opened. What can be seen is that no matter which trim version, it will actually use two-tone decoration, but this two-tone is not created by the roof structure spray color contrast, but by the multi-road driving surround in the lower half.
In terms of size, the length, width and height of the vehicle reach 5205/1990/1805mm respectively, and the wheelbase of the body is 2950mm, this big guy weighing 2570kg is full of design at the same time, will be more like the combination of Lexus LX and Toyota Land Cooluzer, in a more tough style interpretation of top luxury.
In terms of interior, we have seen the right-hand drive version design of this car, relatively speaking, it does not bring us many surprises in this part, whether it is a three-spoke steering wheel with vertical layout buttons, or an embedded digital instrument cluster and central touch screen, the vehicle is difficult to link with the sense of technology. However, through the air conditioning and seat temperature touch panels on the central control structure, as well as a large number of auxiliary function buttons on the outside of the gear shift mechanism, I believe that the vehicle will not have any problems in terms of functional richness and technological content.
Of course, as we saw in the publicity trailer "driver door opening service" before, Toyota Century SUV still emphasizes the identity and comfort of the occupants sitting in the rear, which is why we not only saw the multimedia and air conditioning touch screen at the front of the rear large-sized armrest box, but also saw the foldable independent entertainment screen hanging behind the headrests of the front seats, and the quartz watches commonly found on flagship sedans such as Phaeton, the old S-Class were also placed above the rear exhaust vents, while fully ensuring the comfort and luxury of the rear row. It also exposes some of the car's more "creative old-school practices".
In terms of power, the Toyota Century SUV, which shares the TNGA-K platform with the next-generation Toyota Highlander and the new overseas Lexus TX, has not gone further in terms of basic construction or core hardware, and will layout a plug-in hybrid system based on the 3.5L naturally aspirated V6 engine of the 2GR-FXS model. As a plug-in version of the THS, the engine itself will be able to deliver a maximum power of 193kW (262Ps) and will be equipped with dual motors at the front 134kW/80kW in the rear, resulting in a combined power output of up to 303kW (412Ps). In terms of transmission, Toyota did not try to carry out DHT hybrid special gearbox, but insisted on using e-CVT continuously variable transmission mechanism with higher smoothness and lower cost, and after matching a set of ternary lithium battery packs, the vehicle will have a pure electric cruising range of 69km.
As the only Toyota production car to match the V12 engine, the second generation of the Toyota Century model went through a decade, and it was not until 2018 that the third generation was launched. However, the SUV model, now code-named G70, is not the fourth generation of this brand, but it gives us a glimpse of Toyota's ambition to bring the brand's flagship to more markets around the world. As they did in the Toyota crown, the Toyota Century SUV will enter the global market, competing with top luxury flagships such as the Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class in the image of "Japanese Cullinan".