TOYOTA CENTURY SUV

Special car for the parade

On April 20th, 2025, the Motor Fan Festa 2025 was held at Fuji Speedway. This year’s event was packed with highlights, including a large-scale test drive event where visitors could test drive popular domestic and international models all at once, but the main event was the Super Grid Walk. This is a popular event where nearly 90 famous cars from various genres, both domestic and international, line up on the main straight of Fuji Speedway, and one particularly rare car lined up there was the extremely rare Century Open Car.

Many people have probably seen this unusual Century convertible on the news. It’s a one-off special edition vehicle based on the Century SUV, released in 2024 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of sumo wrestling, Japan’s national sport. It’s a special car for parades, with rear seats that can accommodate three people: the winning wrestler from each tournament, the flag bearer, and a sponsor chosen by the winning wrestler.

When I spoke to Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief development officer, who was visiting Grid for the Super Grid Walk exhibition, he said that while one would expect the rear seats to be heavily reinforced since they would seat two sumo wrestlers, who would generally weigh 200kg, no major reinforcements have been made. As expected, the roof has been removed to make the car open, so the floor under the rear seats has been reinforced, but other than that, the only adjustments made were to the suspension so that even large passengers sitting in the rear seats would not sink in.

Sofa style for comfortable seating

The purpose of this open-top car is to honor the winning sumo wrestlers. Therefore, they want to make sure that the wrestlers are comfortable. Previous Crowns had rear seats that leaned against exposed pipes, but this one has been redesigned to be a sofa-style seat that the winning wrestlers can sit in comfortably. According to the chief engineer, they studied furniture and took great care to ensure that the rear sofa was beautifully finished, and to achieve this beautiful styling, they even created a trunk that did not exist in the base model. This is a car that allows no compromises.

According to the event organizers, this was the first time that this Century convertible had been seen outside of a sumo parade. It was such a rare opportunity that it was a big hit on the grid walk. But what’s even more amazing is that this precious Century convertible entered the track from the pits and completed a full lap of the track onto the straightaway to line up on the grid.

Although the editorial team was not able to see the car in action this time, the sight of this rare, one-of-a-kind car racing around Japan’s most famous circuit was undoubtedly a special occasion that could only be seen at the Motor Fan Festa.

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