In 2025, Toyota made waves by creating a new standalone brand to entirely change its previous two-tiered hierarchy. For decades before, Toyota was famous for selling mainstream vehicles through its eponymous brand while using Lexus to handle the expensive stuff. Now Toyota wanted to establish a new pinnacle with what it described as a “car in a class of its own”, a standalone brand above Lexus.
Toyota chairperson Akio Toyoda knows how to move the needle in the automotive world and once made an appropriately grand entrance to a key event. It celebrated his induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame, and the perfect moment to showcase an ultra-luxury, chauffeur-driven and pioneering vehicle.
Entering in such a vehicle perfectly achieved the company's goal of bringing this new brand to the attention of a more global audience. One of the most interesting parts of the new vehicle was its platform, not an entirely isolated engineering ecosystem, but something shared with the much humbler Grand Highlander.
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