These Toyota Design Concepts Are So Wacky They Were Never Made

Every self-respecting carmaker has some sort of specialized division, office, or team, tasked with pushing the boundaries of design and coming up with ideas that may one day be used on a production vehicle. In the case of Japanese company Toyota, one of those teams' names is Calty Design Research.

The crew was established in secret back in 1973 in El Segundo, California as a means to tap into new man- and brainpower resources from a society that was at the time fundamentally different than that of Japan.

You may not know the name, as even today Calty likes to do its thing in the shadows, but these are the guys at least partially responsible for the design of the 1978 Toyota Celica, for instance.

Most recently the group came into focus as the makers of the Baby Lunar Cruiser, an off-roader meant for use on the Moon, on Mars, or elsewhere in this solar system of ours. The concept, shaped like an SUV and packing all sorts of wacky technologies, was a design study meant to celebrate Calty's 50th year of existence on this planet.

But the drawers over at the team's offices in California hide a lot more crazy concepts designed over the years, many of them never before seen in public. For some reason, Toyota decided this week to give us a glimpse into four of them. Here they are, in all their unsung glory and wackiness.

Future High-Performance Concept – the one with the engine on the outside

Cooling is an extremely important factor for any piece of technology powering a car. That's why all of the internal combustion engined cars ever made feature a grille, fan and radiator at the front, or ducts to pull in cold air for the ones with the engine in the back.

When the Future High-Performance Concept needed to cool itself down, though, it simply lifted its engine out of the body and let it chill. As per the details shared by Toyota, raising the mid-mounted engine was done by simply pushing a button while the car was on the move.

The hardware did not come up bare naked, but shielded by a cover that features a large air intake up top.

The concept was a two-cockpit design, with the driver-side windshield able to close completely when parked.

The car was created by Calty in 1989, and nothing came of it or its radical ideas. Imagine how weird such a thing would have been, or simply look at the photo above for a taste of that.

Nameless EV Concept – the one that's uglier than a Prius

Toyota introduced the Prius as the "car for the 21st century" in 1997, and managed to officially turn it into the world's first truly successful electrified vehicle. Which is kind of strange, given the thing's ugliness.

But Calty was playing with design ideas for electrified vehicles from way before the Japanese rolled out their hybrid. In fact, they were trying to come up with a proper, full-blown EV.

The nameless EV concept pictured above is one of the results of those efforts. It was made "just so Toyota Motor Corporation could see what one could look like," meaning we have no idea what kind of electric drivetrain could have powered it.

We do see on this thing – which, to be fair, seems even uglier than the first-gen Prius – some of the elements that are widespread on today's EVs: the wind-cutting profile, thin tires, and special wheels.

The car was imagined as a two-door, four-seat vehicle that was to be used for city driving. It's unclear if it actually inspired any tech that Toyota eventually ended up developing.

X86D – the one that remade the Scion FR-S

Of all the four Calty concepts Toyota showed this week, the X86D is definitely the most impressive, at least visually. It seems to blend the aggressiveness of a Supra with the elegance of a BMW hatch, mixes that with a touch of shooting brake madness, and adds a spoon of Scion FR-S.

Well, that Scion part is actually true, as the X86D was designed by Calty using that car's flat-4 engine and all-wheel drive as a base.

Yet whereas the FR-S was a two-door coupe, the concept based on it was turned into a four-door shooting brake, one that distinguishes itself the most through the shape of the rear end. One that, according to Toyota, gives the concept "a hot rod-like appearance."

The X86D came about back in 2012, but nothing came of it either.

NYC Concept – the one that looks like the child of the Fiat Multipla

You know how we like to save the best for last, so here it is: the NYC Concept, and in its case best means worst.

Urban mobility has always been at the center of carmakers' attention, and that led over the years to both usable and proper solutions, and to ideas so insane they could never have worked. The NYC Concept is, naturally, part of the latter category.

Designed as a means to explore "future transportation trends in big cities," the car kind of brings to mind the Fiat Multipla flop of the 2000s. But a closer look reveals it is stranger still.

Meant as an internal project only, the NYC had an interior so tall it would have allowed those inside to rest in a semi-seated/standing position. This would have allowed them to be at eye level with pedestrians, which for some reason Toyota seems to have once thought it's something people want.

This vehicle too was presented to the carmaker's higher-ups in 2012, and (thankfully) nothing came of it either.