Car concepts Lexus and Toyota

The Japanese automotive manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corporation, contacted Ilkka Suppanen to design a concept for two of their products: the Toyota Yaris and the Lexus LS cars. Concerning luxury automobiles, Suppanen realized these luxury brands tend to highlight and represent their respective national identities in their car designs. For example, German luxury cars tend to showcase state-of-the-art engineering while English luxury cars are stylistically aristocratic in design. However, it is often difficult to distinguish what exactly is definitive of Japanese luxury cars. In his conceptual design for Toyota, Suppanen aimed to pinpoint what embodies a Japanese luxury automobile and designed the car interiors to reflect this. Due to nondisclosure agreements, only preliminary sketches and images are able to be shown here to the public.