The essential Toyota values of roominess,
style and environmentally advanced performance come
together in a dynamic new way in the F3R, the latest
concept vehicle from Toyota.
The surprising F3R, made its debut at the
North American International Automobile Show in Detroit on January the
9th, as an exercise in providing maximum space, efficiency and athletic
style from the combined concepts of "box"and "wedge".
It is a creative, sporty extension of a concept all
but forgotten in today's automotive world – that
of the minivan.
The project was a joint undertaking of Calty Design
Research Inc., Toyota's California design studio,
and the company's California-based Advanced Product
Strategy group. It was commissioned because of changes
in the minivan market. "While the loyalty of minivan buyers is very high,
the inflow of new buyers to the segment is low,"said
John Simmons, national manager, Advanced Product Strategy,
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. "It continues
to fall from a high of about 900,000 new buyers to
the segment in 1994 to about 500,000 in 2005.
Additionally, the median age of the minivan buyer,
currently 51, is increasing more rapidly than in other
segments of the industry."Yet we know that in
spite of their stigma, minivans are great vehicles.
The fundamentals make total sense. There is no more
efficient vehicle,"
said Simmons. "The F3R is about taking a mainstream product
with a specific identity and trying to go way beyond
that image," said Kevin Hunter, vice president,
Calty Design Research Inc. "With its expressive
design and excitement, we think it's something you'd
want to drive because you desire it, not just because
you need it for its function. We think that it expands
the boundaries of the genre."
Starting with a simple, blue-sky request for a three-row
concept vehicle, Ian Cartabiano, the Project Chief Designer
for the vehicle's exterior, and Alan Schneider, Project
Chief Designer for the F3R's interior, began readying
sketches depicting an adaptable performance vehicle
oriented toward a young family.
The decision to explore the possibilities of three-row
seating made sense. "It's the most practical package
there is. It's useful and versatile. But it's most often
associated with minivans, and there's a stigma associated
with minivans,"said Cartabiano. "I think that
today's young drivers see the minivan as the vehicle
they were carted around in when they were kids. It's
their parents' car. They don't want anything to do with
one.”
Cartabiano and Schneider began the project by listing
positive attributes of the minivan. These included its
space efficiency, versatility, roominess, handling,
fuel efficiency and ride quality. "We wanted to keep those, but we wanted to add
styling and image. We needed performance and aggressive,
upscale styling to attract male buyers, young professional
women and families," said Cartabiano.
"So
the challenge was to revitalize what a three-row vehicle
could be. We needed to appeal to more people, with more
functions for the lifestyles of buyers who are outside
the definition of the usual minivan buyer. This vehicle
needed to show the advantages of what three rows can
do as a way of serving a market that's mostly being
ignored," said Schneider.
Hunter explained, "We know how vans are used and
how they're configured. We wanted to look at the social
aspect, and at how we could use an interior to bring
families closer together to enhance their experience.
So we created this relaxed lounge environment.” Which raises the question, why a lounge interior in
a motor vehicle? Schneider has a ready answer: "Younger
people are hanging out in their cars. When they do that,
the car becomes an entertainment area. The F3R expands
on that concept. It's a sophisticated extension of the
home.”
To create that extension, the design team came up with
three very modern looking sets of seats. Each is unique,
composed of modern, metal-edged bottoms and asymmetrical
backs whose symmetry is completed by semi-integrated
headrests.
They can provide roomy, comfortable seating
for eight adult passengers. Up front, the driver's seat reclines and swivels, and
the passenger seat reclines to form a comfortable chaise.
In the middle, the right and center sections of the
40/20/40-percent second-row seats fold into the floor
and the left-hand seat reclines fully to form, with
the rearmost or third row, an avant-garde sofa built
around the sort of conversation area you might find
in an upscale home.
This is surrounded by a casual, wrap-around backrest
formed by the continuous, flowing curve of the instrument
panel, doors and rear seatback panels. These are accented
by fiber-optic lighting panels in the seat sides, and
in the F3R's right-center grand entry, that can be lit
to provide illumination during lounge chat sessions. But there's more to do here than just chat. That's because
Schneider equipped the F3R with two track-mounted flat-panel
video screens. These allow the vehicle's occupants to
enjoy movies or games whenever they want, and to do
so in complete comfort, with control supplied by an
audio/video/lighting remote unit that docks in the F3R's
dash.
The lounge mode would be useful any time the vehicle
is not moving, Schneider said, adding, "It would
be ideal when you take the kids to games or sporting
events, or when you're just hanging out with friends.
It's a living room away from home." But if the F3R is a living room away from home, it also
offers a very comfortable and very useable motor-vehicle
interior. Seating, in transport mode, is stadium-style,
with each row just a little higher than the row in front
of it to provide optimal passenger comfort and visibility.
And it provides convenient three-door access on both
sides to reflect adult-size space in all three rows. To enhance the F3R's utility, its center-row seats
stow individually, and the center seat in the middle
row can be configured as a "front-and-center"child
seat.
Schneider took special care to design a unique three-tier
instrument panel that is, like the interior itself,
dual-mode. He explained, "The upper strip, right below the
windshield, has two modes – one for driving and
one for lounge. When driving, it has warning lights,
the transmission shift indicator, a clock and some audio.
When in lounge mode, it turns an ambient blue. "The second tier is the main meter panel for the
driver. It houses all the driving functions - the speedometer,
the tachometer, the fuel gauge, the screen for a navigation
system and the multi-info screen for the hybrid system
monitor. The lower tier is the control board with switches
for controlling lights and the climate control, supplemented
of course by steering-wheel switches."
But that's not all. On the far right-hand side of this
lower panel is the detachable remote-control module
that can be taken into the F3R's lounge to control the
audio and video systems and the lounge lighting. Schneider's design emphasizes environmentally sensitive
materials, in keeping with the theme of environmental
sensitivity suggested by the Hybrid Synergy Drive badging
on the F3R. These materials include floor panels made
from Ecoresin, a specially formulated resin that can
be recycled; and a skin-friendly simulated leather seating
material called Mythos that, unlike most plastics, does
not produce the harmful chemical dioxin when it is burned.
Cartabiano's starting point for the F3R's exterior shape,
meanwhile, featured a van that conveyed maximum volume,
with a tall, wedged body shape that incorporated wide,
dynamic shoulders, with its sporty 22-inch wheels and
wide performance tires planted at the extreme boundaries
of all four corners. "Our thought was, don't lose the space, do gain
the performance," explained Cartabiano.
He added, "But we needed to package all that interior
space. So we started with that iconic wedge shape and
a high beltline. And I wanted it to have an aggressive,
strong face." Cartabiano continued, "Today's
minivans have a needle-nose quality. Everybody is trying
to push the front really low to try to disguise the
fact that the vehicle is a van. We didn't want to do
that. We wanted this bold, in-your-face front end. We
wanted to create presence. We want this thing recognizable.
When they see it in their rearview mirrors, we want
people to say, 'Oh yeah, that's the Toyota F3R!'” Additionally, said Hunter, the design team wanted to
add a quality known as "the J-factor"to the
design of the F3R's nose.
Hunter explained, "We define ‘J-factor'
as design elements rooted in Japanese culture that are
common to Toyota as a Japanese company and will appeal
to American tastes. There are a lot of vans with robust
noses driving around in Japan and we are trying to impart
some of that thinking into the F3R." What the team wound up with just might be one of the
more unique and recognizable front-end treatments to
be seen in a while. To get there, Cartabiano started
with a front-three-quarter view so he could concentrate
on a nose with sculpted, high-mounted headlamps, which
help hide the front fascia's corners, and on its wedge
profile.
Cartabiano explained, "One of our main things is
the wedge, the iconic profile. Most minivans taper toward
the back. We tried to go against that grain. The sideline
of the roof rises toward the back to provide room for
our three rows of seating. The floor rises for stadium
seating, and this wedge allows you do to this. The result
is that the third row no longer is punishment, no longer
is the penalty box that you don't want to ride in. It
has just as much room as the first and second rows." With the basic shape of the F3R set in his mind, and
with a front-end concept sketched, Cartabiano began
thinking of the rest of the F3R's surfaces, using what
he describes as "wet and dry surface taste."
For the F3R's flanks, he chose a highly sculpted, flowing
– or wet – shape, with fender flares smoothly
integrated into the body. And for the nose and rear
he went the opposite direction, choosing very clean
lines and surfaces that are very simple – or,
in designer-speak, dry.
Then he applied some three-dimensional shaping to the
beltline, or shoulder, to get the cabin inset, so that
the lower body looks wider than the greenhouse, or upper
cabin. And he came up with a rocker-panel section that incorporates
what he calls a comet light-catch. Cartabiano said,
"I wanted a really strong rocker panel that plants
the car on the ground, gives it a stable stance. I call
it ‘comet' because it catches a highlight and
it has a comet shape. It goes from thin to thick and
then trails off like a comet tail." "From
a conceptual point of view, this an extremely roomy
vehicle in an intelligently sized exterior. It has more
interior space than you normally would have," said
Cartabiano.
"That was done with a long wheelbase,
which gives you more length inside. Moving those wheel
wells out of the way is how we get the third-row row
seating with a lot of legroom. And we needed headroom,
so thanks to the wedge shape, the roof is higher, floor
is angled and elevated to provide a better view from
all the rows. Then there's the door arrangement, with
three per side, allowing access to all three rows. This
is much better than what you normally would have, and
it creates more the sense of a personal and sporty vehicle."The result is that the F3R looks like a stylish performance
vehicle. But the feeling inside is very airy and light.
Part of that feeling is because the D pillar is angled
rearward to create a wraparound rear glass that provides
a widescreen view of the world outside when the vehicle
is reversing.
And though the F3R seems to have a high beltline, it
isn't as high as it looks. That's the result of what
the vehicle's designers call proportion tuning. Said
Cartabiano, "The cabin kind of looks chopped, but
the beltline is not much higher than that of the current
Sienna. This look is a trick done by lowering bottom
of the car, making the body look a little thicker.” The result, of course, is a concept vehicle filled not
only with intelligent drama, but with exactly the fresh
take on three rows of seating, and on the usable space
that vans so effectively provide, that Toyota executives
were looking for. They wanted anything but a minivan.
What they got was a sporty new vehicle that defies an
easy label. With a dramatic, iconic shape that is as
distinctive as that of the Toyota Prius and an interior
that is more adaptable and more family friendly than
anything previously seen, it's reasonable to suspect
that the automotive world could soon be seeing styling
elements from the F3R on future Toyota production vehicles.
"Certainly we are developing concept cars with
the intent that they influence production cars. So we
take the F3R's packaging very seriously," said
Hunter. "We're looking at that design very seriously
to gauge its potential as a base for a production vehicle." |