Toyota Is Taking On Rolls-Royce & Bentley With New ‘Century’ Ultra-Luxury Brand

Century seeks to launch a bold new era of Japanese automotive excellence.

If you haven’t heard of Century, don’t worry. You will. Toyota is throwing down the gauntlet at the top of the automotive luxury space with the new brand whose motto is “One of One,” and whose mission is going toe-to-toe with Rolls-Royce and Bentley in the luxury market’s highest altitude. With this new coupe concept, joining the recently revealed SUV and sedan concepts, Century seeks to help define a new era for the Japanese automotive industry. 

In a crowded hall at the Japan Mobility Show, packed with automotive media from around the world, Akio Toyoda, chairman of the brand’s board of directors, stood in front of the cloth-draped silhouette of a mystery fastback coupe that would soon complete a trinity of vehicles in the Century lineup. His presence here was a statement in itself. 

With emotion in his voice, Toyoda delivered a speech that felt as much like a rally for Japanese pride as it did a vehicle reveal. “I believe this car was born carrying Japan on its shoulders,” said Toyoda as he reached back in time to tell the story of the post-war Japanese automotive industry through the lens of Toyota. Then he skipped ahead a few decades to when the first Century vehicle was developed by his grandfather, Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, and Toyota’s first chief engineer, Kenya Nakamura. 

The year was 1963. Tokyo was hosting the next year’s Summer Olympics, and Toyoda and Nakamura set out to create the “pinnacle of luxury cars,” as Akio tells it. With everything they had learned about making modern cars paired with traditional details like Edo metal engraving on the phoenix emblem and Nishijin-ori brocade for the seat fabric, they released the original Century in 1967. 

“What the people of Japan needed at that time… was a sense of pride in being Japanese,” said Akio Toyoda. He defined his grandfather’s mission as creating a “democratic, automotive-industrial nation, contributing to Japan’s peaceful rebuilding and to world culture.” 

For Akio Toyoda, that mission is as relevant today as it was then. “The ‘Japan as No. 1’ era is behind us,” he said. “Japan as a nation seems to have lost some of its energy and dynamism, along with our presence in the world.” 

You could feel this line cut through the room. It landed hard, but not without a noticeable sense of collective agreement. He had clearly struck a chord that the mostly Japanese crowd understood better than I ever could. But it’s clear from my viewpoint at the Japan Mobility Show that the world is changing fast, and the automotive world must change with it. So, when an industry is as closely identified with a culture as is the Japanese automotive industry, then that change is cultural, too.  

“If Kiichiro and Nakamura could see Japan today, what would they say?” Toyoda asked, “I suspect they wouldn’t say anything and instead leap straight into action.”

The Century is that action. In Toyoda’s words, it is “not just another brand within Toyota Motor Corporation,” but something much more ambitious: “We want to cultivate it as a brand that brings the spirit of Japan―the pride of Japan―out into the world.”

There are scant details on specs for Century vehicles at the moment, nor confirmation of where in the world they will be sold. But the stakes are high and the intention is clear—to be the best again.