Inside Toyota’s Plan to Take on Rolls-Royce and Bentley

The biggest announcement at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show—now called the Japan Mobility Show—might be the new Corolla concept, the new Subaru WRX STI hatchback, or several new Lexus LS variants.

In addition, though, there was something even bigger: a whole new brand from Toyota, the biggest automaker in the world. The brand is Century, and Toyota’s ambition for it, as was the case with Lexus before it, is to take on the Europeans at a game they’ve been winning for decades. But instead of Mercedes and BMW, Toyota is going after two marques whose market position has, historically, been even more unbreachable: Bentley and Rolls-Royce.

The audacity is thrilling because, on paper, Toyota doesn’t stand much of a chance. Even Mercedes tried to take on Bentley and Rolls by reviving Maybach, before settling instead for a distant third-place in the ultra-luxury wars. Aston Martin likes to pretend it’s in the same league, too, despite being more of a sports-car brand. Cadillac has also recently entered the fray with the $400,000 Celestiq, but it remains to be seen how committed the stateside automaker really is.

Toyota’s Century will mark a third, fourth, or fifth entrant into this rarefied space, depending on who’s counting, though one major difference is that Toyota is being explicit. At the auto show in Tokyo, Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s chairman, staked his country’s pride on it.

“Century is not just another brand within Toyota Motor Corporation,” Toyoda said, getting a little emotional. “We want to cultivate it as a brand that brings the spirit of Japan―the pride of Japan―out into the world.”

What that means is a Century coupe that will do battle with the Bentley Continental and a Century SUV, that is not an SUV, that will do battle with the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. The Century SUV is a plug-in hybrid that includes a V-6 engine for a combined 406 hp of output that has, so far, been marketed to just Japan and China. It is a mystery, meanwhile, what will power the Century coupe, and Toyota isn’t commenting, though it’s fair to assume that it may come in a range of power options, albeit very likely electrified and at least a hybrid if not all-electric.

It’s also not known where Toyota will sell the Century coupe, though it will almost certainly be beyond the shores of Japan and China, since Toyota namechecked Bentley and Rolls, signalling that it wants to take the fight to them.

This new ambition is being foisted upon one of Toyota’s oldest nameplates, dating back over 50 years, and also its proudest, a car that has been used by the Japanese emperor for a lot of that time. The Century has encapsulated the best of Toyota, including one of the first uses of hybrid technology in one of its vehicles, which was presented at the 1975 Tokyo Motor Show in the form of a Century fit with both a gas turbine and electric drive system.

Toyota has also always had ideas for the Century beyond its shores, such as in 1997 with the launch of the second-generation Century, known as the G50. That Century was the first to be exported for sale abroad, at a time when Toyota was trying to establish a bigger presence in Western Europe. Only a handful ever made it there, or were intended to go in the first place, but the point was made that Rolls-Royce should expect company sooner or later.

Toyota has, historically and now with the new model, distinguished the Century as a car intended to have a chauffeur, while Rolls-Royce and Bentley in recent decades have emphasized that their cars are intended to drive as well as they ride in from the rear seat, and, in fact, most Rolls-Royce and Bentley owners drive their cars themselves. Whether driving yourself is still true luxury is an interesting question in an era when self-driving cars feel increasingly inevitable, but Toyota’s answer is unequivocal: True luxury is sitting in the back, like an emperor. It introduced the new Century SUV in 2023 as a distinct category, a “chauffeur-driven vehicle.”

The new Century brand represents a capstone achievement for the automaker, similar to what it accomplished over 50 years ago, this time not rebounding from World War II but from over three decades of economic malaise in Japan, also known as the Lost Decades.

“Japan as a nation seems to have lost some of its energy and dynamism, along with our presence in the world,” Toyoda said in Tokyo, before invoking the spirit of Kenya Nakamura, Toyota’s first product manager, who created the Toyota Crown and designed the first Century, which stayed in production for 30 years.

“When Nakamura saw the postwar media headline ‘Starting from Zero,’ he said, ‘It’s not zero.’ It’s true that our facilities were destroyed, and we had no materials or money. But we had the strengths and skills that Japan had built up. That’s why we were able to rebuild. He said that in anger,” Toyoda noted at the motor show in Tokyo, invoking the country’s proud legacy of monozukuri, or manufacturing. “Today, Japan has an automotive industry that operates on a global scale. We possess the monozukuri skills that have sustained the nation, stunning nature that enchants people around the world, a rich food culture, and a spirit of hospitality […] I believe now more than ever, we need the Century.”