Toyota recently celebrated 50 years of creating products at its CALTY Design Research center in Newport Beach, California. The evening program started with self-guided tours. This journalist watched a designer ‘napkin sketch’ the exterior of a Toyota Tacoma midsize pickup truck in a couple of minutes, then viewed CALTY’s latest concept vehicle, Baby Lunar Cruiser (BLC), via virtual reality headgear. The BLC’s halo-inspiration is the fuel-cell powered Lunar Cruiser moon rover that’s being developed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and Toyota. With design cues from the original Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser, concept BLC’s features include a fold-flat hard surface deck, structural sky roof, in-wheel electric motors, airless tires, and built-in drones.

In addition to evaluating product designs in virtual reality, CALTY workers can fashion detailed parts, or full-size vehicle models, inside the center’s milling room. A five-axis CNC (computer numerical controls) machine can generate a foam or clay model in just a few hours. An in-house painting booth can spray color on sample parts and sculptures, essentially anything with a surface. The development of new colors, finishes, and paint technology processes give vibrancy to future Toyota vehicle designs. CALTY’s most recent production designs are the 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser SUV and the 2024 Toyota Tacoma.