The latest Crown offers four different body variations. Toyota Times caught up with the Sport model's test drivers and engineers to find out which aspects of a Crown are not open to compromise.
The 16th generation Crown comes in four different body types. Each model’s developers were committed to pursuing the core elements of “Crownness” (quietness, comfort, and quality) that have defined the driving experience over successive generations. At the same time, they imbued each vehicle with a distinct character unique to its body type.
A key role in creating the feel of a car is played by the test drivers. To discover how they help shape the driving experience, Toyota Times spoke with the test drivers and engineers behind the development of each Crown series model. In this article, we highlight the genba that created the Sport.
Preserving the Crown’s essence
The Crown Sport was launched as “a new form of sporty SUV,” offering a dynamic, agile driving experience.
“We set out to develop a car that’s exhilarating to look at, ride in, and experience from behind the wheel,” says Yuji Honma, who oversaw product planning for the Crown Sport.
Honma
Rather than a hardcore sports car, we wanted to create something that could be enjoyed by everyone, including older and female drivers.
A car that you can drive comfortably around town, but which also comes to life when you get out onto the open road. That was our goal.
Shinichiro Matsumiya, an engineer at the MS Platform Development Division, led the design and development of chassis performance for the Crown series. After finishing the Crossover, he recalls facing the daunting task of improving on that achievement for the Sport.
Matsumiya
We began by building a preliminary development vehicle with a shortened wheelbase based on the Crossover and worked with our test driver, Katayama, to explore the direction of the Sport. We fitted it with hard springs and thick stabilizers, tuning the dampers accordingly.
When we did so, he told us plainly that “you can’t make a Crown by simply stiffening a car’s suspension.”
Tomoyuki Katayama, a test driver with the Advanced Technical Skills Institute Division, provided development support across the latest Crown series. As he explains, “There are certain elements that a Crown absolutely must retain.”
Katayama
Just as with the Crossover, we needed to ensure a smooth, premium driving feel from zero to around 20 km/h. I told the development team that, even if it is labeled as a sports model, every Crown requires attention to such detail.
As they strived to achieve the feel that Katayama described, the team tried to figure out how to express the Sport’s character through the driving experience.
Kazuma Terao of the TC Vehicle Evaluation & Engineering Division was one of the engineers engaged in developing handling stability and ride comfort. When considering how the vehicle should drive, he too was swayed by the “Sport” name.
Terao
We placed an emphasis on sporty driving, but just as with the takeoff, the feedback from Katayama was that it felt too rough for a Crown.
Matsumiya
If you’re building a Crown, you can’t compromise on a high-quality, comfortable driving experience. To achieve that premium feel, you need suspension that can fluidly deal with subtle unevenness on the road surface.
We discussed how to balance sporty agility with graceful elegance and came to the conclusion that we needed to pursue driving pleasure over pure speed.
For us, the guiding idea was that sportiness is about more than just stiffness.
The development team tested dozens of shock absorber variations with different parts configurations and valve thicknesses, searching for the optimal specifications. Ultimately, tweaking the shock absorbers allowed them to create the driving feel they had envisioned.
Matsumiya
Shock absorbers vary damping force by combining multiple valves. To respond properly to the car’s motion, we set the damping high for initial movements, then loosen it up a little and raise the damping again for bigger shifts.
These were the settings we arrived at with our tuners, based on Katayama’s feedback, as we searched for a sports setup befitting the Crown.
When 300 grams makes all the difference
Aside from the driving feel, that initial development vehicle also raised another concern: the suspension’s front-rear balance.
Katayama
The front suspension felt a little too stiff. In a car, when you step off the gas pedal or apply the brakes, the weight shifts toward the front wheels, allowing the driver to turn comfortably, as intended.
With the preliminary development vehicle, we had no problems when braking hard and producing high Gs, as you would when cornering on a racetrack.
However, in city driving conditions where you ease off the gas and lightly step on the brakes at an intersection, the stiff front suspension would hamper the transfer of weight to the front wheels. This causes the turning line to bulge further outward than the driver intends.
Sports car or not, I wanted to make sure that even at city speeds it allowed the weight to nicely shift back and forth in line with the driver’s expectations.
Cornering entails all the core functions of a car: driving, turning, and stopping. As such, the chassis and suspension engineers worked with team members handling acceleration and brake performance, repeatedly tuning the vehicle to deliver the kind of driving that Katayama had in mind.
Honma
In the past, the organization was split up along functional lines, with handling stability staff focusing solely on that function and those in charge of engine performance looking only at the engine.
With that approach, however, it is difficult to optimize overall performance, consisting of driving, turning, and stopping.
Instead, our teams are now structured around individual vehicles, with all members related to dynamic performance collaborating on development as one group.
One interesting anecdote reveals the development team’s dedication to even the smallest details in the carmaking process.
When the shock absorbers were fine-tuned to resolve the stiff front suspension issue, the difference in damping force between the specs that Katayama okayed and those he rejected proved to be just three newtons.
Matsumiya
To explain it in simple terms, for an 1,800-kilogram car, three newtons equal just 300 grams.
Yet by lowering the shock absorbers’ resistance by three newtons, we completely transformed how the car behaves.
As a value, three newtons is too small to show up on the graphs. And yet, by experiencing and understanding these slight numerical differences firsthand, the engineers were able to engage more closely with Katayama and the other test drivers, contributing to ever-better carmaking.
With the Crown Sport, the team set out to develop “a new form of sporty SUV.”Their approach, which makes full use of the sensory evaluations of test drivers, is widely adopted across Toyota’s carmaking genba.
Our next article will focus on the Crown Sedan as we continue to uncover what it takes to create a quality driving experience.