Toyota Uses 40 Cars to Play Giant Game of Japanese Chess (Shogi)

Now that Top Gear appears to be at an end, the car football game they invented will have to live on as car chess. The whole thing took about 50 minutes to play out and was done on a gigantic scale with pinpoint precision. What's amazing is the diversity of the cars they used.

For example, you have an early version of the Land Cruiser, a Harrier SUV covered in chrome vinyl and even the AE86 from Initial D. Brand new Toyotas are also used, including the Prius and the new Mirai hydrogen-power car.

Toyota is currently the biggest car company in Japan, by a long margin in fact. Of the 10 best selling normal cars in the country, half are made by them – Aqua (Prius c), Prius, Voxy, Corolla and Vitz. Their Daihatsu division is also a big player in the kei car market, though it lags behind Honda.

Shogi is a lot like chess in that you have to take the opponent's pieces. Two players, Sente (Black) and Gote (White), play on a 9x9 board composed of rectangles in a grid. Each has 20 pieces of slightly different shapes and sizes that have words on them instead of a specific shape like chess pieces. There's one king, one bishop, 4 generals and even 9 pawns, but there aren't any queens.

If you understand the game and speak Japanese, feel free to watch the whole 50 minute match with live commentary. For us, who can't even understand who won, the short version was boring enough.