Is Everything OK, Toyota? Because You're Building Some Weird Convertibles

You never asked for it, but for a little more than a decade, automakers have delivered the showy, car-based convertible SUVs you've been longing for. That's right, they've taken the sport utility vehicle, subtracted the utility portion—creating some separation from Jeep's Wrangler, a real SUV that also is a convertible—lopped of the roof, and BAM! Open-air fun at a ride height well above mere mortal cars, without that pesky stiff ride you get in a Jeep.

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The Odd Squad

It all started with Nissan's drop-top Murano, which not only deleted its top, but shed its rear doors for a short lived quasi-coupe/convertible runabout dubbed the CrossCabriolet that, unless you were really paying attention, probably drifted right by without you ever noticing. A few years later, Range Rover one-upped the discontinued Murano with its highly similar Evoque convertible, marking the world's first toplessluxurynot-SUV. (Again, Mercedes-Benz had sold the topless G-Class elsewhere in the world, and don't forget the original Land Rover Defender; again, both were actual 4x4s, not gussied-up tall cars.) That Evoque, too, probably snuck right by you.

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Six years after the Evoque convertible bowed out, Toyota is shocking everyone with yet another roofless crossover-ish concept, this one based on the Crown sedan that sits nearly as high as an SUV and looks as awkward as it sounds on paper—both in standard four-door and one-off convertible forms. The Crown convertible build was revealed yesterday in a video by Toyota Times alongside the somewhat more natural looking Toyota Century SUV convertible intended to be used as a parade transport for Sumo wrestling champions.

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Blowing the Roof Off

The sleek, sloping roofline that offsets the Crown's ultra-tall doors and massive wheel gap, along with the B-and-C-pillars, was completely removed, though unlike the Murano CrossCab, Toyota kept all four doors in place. What we'd expected would be an extremely a wonky transition in the rear between the decklid and the roof cut is actually quite smooth, given the dramatic surgery that took place.

The upper portion of the Crown's rear quarters actually lend themselves to a fairly natural transition once the top was hacked off, especially since the two-toned paint scheme was kept. The small rear window's lower frame is now topped with a finishing cover and behind and below that, everything is exactly the way it comes from the factory. The strange combination of a low-slung roof and tall flanks in factory form is somewhat remedied with this conversion, even if there's a little Volkswagen Beetle bustle-butt going on.

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Fully Furnished

Inside, the interior remains factory issue with the rear parcel shelf now wider and leather wrapped, and the same material applied to the top portion of the windshield, a spot that's often an eyesore when these sorts of conversions are done. That finisher comes off a bit clunky due to the interior's light color against the black A-pillar trim and copper paint, which gives the strip of material an almost floating appearance, but it still looks well done. In fact, the entire conversion, done in-house at Toyota, is top-notch. Oftentimes when a third party is tasked with this sort of endeavor, transforming a normally fixed-roof car to a droptop, unkempt touches tend to pull away from the finished product.

It's nonetheless an incredibly strange effort on Toyota's part, given the small number of convertible enthusiasts and even smaller number (just over 2,000) of current Crown buyers (at least here in America). Like your dad wearing ripped skinny jeans with his favorite Nike Monarchs, the combination doesn't quite fit right. Where the Murano at least had the shock factor of being the first in this category, and the Evoque took it a step further with its "get in loser, we're going shopping" upscale luxury feel, the Crown 'vert likely wouldn't have an audience other than serving as a rental car for the older crowd vacationing on the coast. If given the option, we'd really prefer our specially modified Crown sedan to get a rally-inspired GR treatment instead of the open-air concept, but that's just us...

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For now there's seemingly little chance Toyota sends the Crown convertible into production—the white Century SUV droptop also pictured here is, technically, a possible real-life build combination, given that Japan-only model's custom nature—but if it were to build the Crown, consider us intrigued. It'd be making an already odd sedan that much odder, and we think it'd do so in a good way. Heck, with the new Crown Signia SUV's impending arrival, Toyota could have a third fancy convertible using something that wasn't intended to be a convertible in the first place.