Toyota celebrates iconic design studio by revealing unseen concepts

Toyota USA has lifted the lid on a top-secret collection of historical concept cars to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its Californian design studio known as Calty – an abbreviation of California and Toyota.

To celebrate the milestone, the Toyota studio has released images of previously unseen concept cars that show what was going on behind closed doors over the past five decades.

According to Toyota, Calty Design Research opened in 1973 to “provide fresh, creative inspiration to Toyota’s global design headquarters in Japan.”

Despite the evolving car culture of the time in California, the team was reportedly told to simply research, hoping to capitalise on future trends of the 1980s.

This was evident with the ‘Travel Trailer’ concept, showing the designers were branching out from the conventional cars and trucks of the time.

By 1978, the facility’s first production car emerged from Toyota’s factory in the form of the second-generation Celica.

Following closely was the 1979 HiLux, which joined the second-generation Celica on sale in Australia the same year.

Since its early days, Calty has penned a number of Toyota designs, some more recognisable than others.

Toyota says one of its most exciting projects in the 1980s was the MX-1 sports car concept. Designed in 1983, it featured a mid-mounted engine as well as 'scissor' doors that opened upwards.

Two years later, Toyota designed the MX-2, which built on the overall styling of the MX-1, but added 'gullwing' doors, and a swing-arm steering system that could be converted between left and right-hand drive.

Toyota also revealed a concept designed by Calty that later went on to become what we know as the A80 (or fourth-generation) Supra.

According to Toyota, Calty had decided to go in a less grand-touring direction than the third-generation Supra, and designed what it called a “pure sports car.”

Despite this concept not making it past this stage, Toyota claims that some of Calty's design elements are still visible in the finished product.

It was also revealed that Toyota has commissioned Calty on the motorsport front, with the brand’s NASCAR entries in the 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2021 seasons all credited to the studio.

More recently, Calty has worked on the 2024 LandCruiser – which will be arriving in Australia as the LandCruiser Prado next year – as well as the latest Toyota Tacoma pick-up sold in North America.

Calty's latest design shows the studio isn’t confining itself just to our planet with its work — revealing a ‘Baby Lunar Cruiser’.

As the name suggests, this vehicle is designed to be able to drive on the moon, and reportedly draws inspiration from the original FJ40 Land Cruiser alongside a ‘Lunar Cruiser’ that’s currently being developed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Toyota.