Toyota’s Calty design center in California has been open for 50 years this month. To mark the occasion, Toyota is showing off plans that were never built, like the mid-engine MX-2 Halo sports car. Like the Acura NSX, but better? Calty’s name comes from combining “California” and “Toyota” was the first Japanese car company to have a design office in the United States. It was always a secret operation, with cost-conscious executives looking over their shoulders. This was done so that the artists could have the freedom to be artistic that they might not have had in Japan. First in El Segundo and then in Newport Beach, designers at CALTY were free to dream as big as they wanted. In a picture of Toyota’s president at the time, Eiji Toyoda, the idea can be seen as a 1/5 scale model. It shows how popular SUVs will become in the future. After Toyoda retired in 1982, this idea car was never made, but its front end looks like the first three-door RAV4. This MX-2 has curved lines, forward-hinged gullwing doors, and a liftable rear canopy, making it look like a famous concept supercar from the 1990s. There are a few McLaren F1s and Jaguar XJ220s in the workshop, but the MX-2 is from 1983. Even though Toyota was still working on the questionable first-generation MR2 as a mid-engine production car, the MX-2 showed what the future might have been like. Look at a late-1980s Toyota Group C racer made safe for the street. Instead, it gave us the Previa (1990) and the Celica (1989). Those were pretty big ideas for functional everyday cars. Even better, Calty would later create the FJ Cruiser in 2006, which brought the good things about the old Land Cruiser into the modern era. The idea of the MX-2 with gullwing doors (top) looks better. The MX-1 came before this. It was also a Calty design, and it had scissor doors and a cabin with a lot of glass that looked like the first-generation NSX. Calty’s idea from the 1990s of what the fourth-generation Supra would have looked like has some features of the fourth-generation Supra as well. Many cars in the current Toyota range were made in California. This includes the Supra, the Crown, the Tacoma, and the Grand Highlander. Toyota’s Calty celebration ended with the release of the Baby Lunar Cruiser, a futuristic Land Cruiser based on the classic FJ40. In addition to this 2012 idea, you have to think that Calty’s designers are working hard on a modern follow-up to the MX-1 and MX-2, but they are locked up in a part of the building where no one can see them. A high-tech answer to Ferraris and McLarens that is new and either all-electric or hybrid. It might never be able to be done because of the money issues. That being said, this is California, the land of dreams.
