Toyota’s American design studio in El Segundo, California, known as CALTY Design Research, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. To provide a glimpse of what its U.S. employees envision for the next 50 years, they were tasked with creating a vision for the future.
What better way to look forward than to look up, and at the moon? Inspired by the work Toyota is doing with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, CALTY decided to have a little fun with the idea of space exploration, and created the Baby Lunar Cruiser (BLC).
Blending elements of the real Lunar Cruiser concept with the brand’s history, CALTY created a moon rover that has design cues inspired by the FJ40 Land Cruiser. The grille at the front of the Baby Lunar Cruiser, and its “TOYOTA” script in particular, is meant to elicit the brand’s history of off-roading.
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But it’s not all retro. A protruding glass canopy offers exceptional visibility outward and, in addition to the BLC’s compact proportions, helps it handle all kinds of terrain with confidence. A panoramic, augmented reality dashboard display and airless tires with in-wheel electric motors will help astronauts navigate any landscape.
Inside, the BLC comes with spaceframe seats and M.O.L.L.E. panels that make it highly adjustable. That allows a crew to adjust the vehicle to be prepared for any adventure it could meet. Although the BLC is a bit of fun from CALTY, that spirit of exploration and bravery are exactly what attracted Toyota to California when it founded the design studio in 1973.
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“California was a youthful, vibrant epicenter of fresh ideas, a cool car culture, and the glamorous movie industry that inspired CALTY to create innovative designs and establish new trends,” said Kevin Hunter, the studio’s president.
Hunter adds that CALTY’s role for the next 50 years will be to explore, innovate, and inspire. “We are excited to continue pushing boundaries in automotive design.”