Everything That’s Different About The Toyota Crown Landscape

JDM enthusiasts take note: there’s another car that you can’t have without filing importation paperwork. The Toyota Crown Landscape, Toyota’s latest addition to its Crown nameplate, practically seems designed for American JDM enthusiasts. To add to its collectors’ appeal, Toyota is only producing the Crown Landscape until December 2024.

The Crown Landscape is perhaps the most all-American vehicle ever to be kept out of the American market. Despite being a sedan, it is a stunningly perfect execution of the all-American crossover SUV. Indeed, the Crown Landscape is a far better SUV than the bZ4X that Toyota is exporting to the United States. It is the perfect blend of the modern-day crossover SUV’s two conflicting identities: the off-road adventure vehicle, and the transportation module for one’s children and Little League gear. It’s almost like Toyota accidentally sent the wrong vehicle to the US and kept the wrong one at home.

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The Crown Landscape Is A Luxury Sedan With SUV Suspension

• The Landscape is an off-road variant of the Toyota Crown luxury sedan.
• It has a high-output powertrain compared to other Crown variants.
• The Crown Landscape is a sedan-styled and clad to resemble an SUV.

The Landscape is Toyota’s long-running Crown luxury sedan in SUV guise. Toyota has lifted it by 25mm (a scant inch), and added beefy cladding, bigger wheels, an optional roof rack, and a towing hitch that comes complete with a crown logo cover. To people outside of Japan, the move from stately sedan to off-roading is a wild leap for a single nameplate. In the United States, sedans and off-roaders are two market categories that never intermingle. Sedans may get high-performance packages, but such enhancements are always more inclined towards racing and other well-paved adventures than the rugged wilderness.

The Crown Landscape Has A High-Horsepower Powertrain

As with every other variant of the Crown, the Landscape is a hybrid. Its Hybrid Max powertrain’s 2.4-liter inline-four engine and electric motor put out a combined 340 horsepower. And of course, since the Crown Landscape is relatively small compared to most luxury barges, it can use more of those 340 horses for speed rather than using them for getting its own weight out of a dead stop.

Standard Toyota Crown Specs

(Data sourced from Toyota)

Of course, the hybrid powertrain may cause a certain subset of JDM enthusiasts to lose interest in the long bureaucratic process of vehicle importation. Like all hybrids, the Crown Landscape has no option for a manual transmission. However, there is a tiny glimmer of hope for those who believe that no car is complete without a gearstick. If Toyota ever makes an all-electric Crown, there is a sliver of a chance that it could be fitted with Toyota’s still-conceptual simulated manual transmission.

Toyota Used Plastic Cladding To Make The Crown Landscape Resemble An SUV

The Crown Landscape has a powertrain that is far more powerful than it needs to be. However, practically every luxury vehicle comes with a few hundred superfluous horses under the hood, so that is hardly a revelatory statement. The Crown Landscape’s real standout point is that it is a sedan riding on an SUV’s suspension. Although Toyota promotes this as a sedan(ish) vehicle suited for adventures in the untamed wilderness, this also makes the Crown Landscape suited for people whose daily driving takes them over streets that are paved with budget cuts instead of asphalt.

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The Crown Landscape’s Interior Is Simple And Elegant

• Toyota gave the Crown Landscape a luxurious yet understated interior.
• The Crown Landscape’s interior is black with silver trim.
• The back seat folds down for those times when the trunk isn’t big enough.
• The driver’s controls are simple instead of gratuitously complex.

The Crown Landscape’s interior is perhaps where its JDM-only status is the most obvious. The interior does not look cheap, but it is (an expensive kind of) modest. Rather than prominently spangling the car with as many conspicuously expensive features as possible, Toyota has instead gone with an understated look. The Crown Landscape is the type of luxury car for people who know they can afford it, not those who desperately need to flaunt their financial status at everyone they drive past.

The Interior Is Understated Yet Upperclass

The interior is executed in black, with small accent lines of matte silver trim deployed as needed. Of course, the entire vehicle is upholstered in leather. In a subtle retro touch, Toyota has placed the vehicle’s name on the glovebox. Toyota claims both in its promotional writing and in its photographs that the Crown Landscape is meant for outdoor adventures. Accordingly, the plush seating appears easy to clean out after having a muddy good time.

The trunk, while perhaps a bit difficult to access (the rear hatch is somewhat small), provides ample storage space. The back seat folds down to provide additional cargo room. Drivers can either fold down one seat or the entire rear bench.

The Controls Are Simple And Practical

The electronics and controls are tastefully sparse. Like the rest of the interior, Toyota is avoiding ostentation. Instead of spangling the dashboard with as many buttons as possible, the instrumentation has a few well-placed controls. Impressively, Toyota has managed to make the center touchscreen look integral to the vehicle instead of like a last-minute dashboard add-on.

The Crown Landscape features a screen instead of mechanical gauges for its instrumentation. But rather than crowding the screen with complicated graphics to constantly remind the driver that the car has the latest in technology (as some European competitors have done), the Crown Landscape keeps its display to basic gauges and readouts.

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The Crown Landscape’s Exterior: A Short Overview

• The Crown Landscape is essentially a lifted sedan.
• Bulky plastic cladding on the fenders gives the Crown a somewhat SUV-like appearance.
• Toyota has given the Crown Landscape a model-exclusive paint scheme.

The Crown Landscape’s odd shape may be the first thing one notices. From a distance, the vehicle either looks like a lifted sedan, a somewhat heavyset fastback (the trunk lid is only a tiny stub below the rear window), or a slightly-slimmed SUV. Aside from its relatively small size (by sport-utility standards), the Crown Landscape’s exterior is the epitome of the modern-day SUV.

While some automakers like Stellantis have attempted to return the SUV to its boxy roots with vehicles like the Jeep Wagoneer, the SUV has gradually transformed into a clunkier, less maneuverable minivan. This has given rise to the crossover SUV, which is essentially an SUV for people who want a vehicle the size of pre-2000s SUVs. The Crown Landscape may be the best C-SUV yet.

The Crown Landscape Is Beefed Up From The Fenders To The Roof Rack

Toyota offers a sturdy-looking roof rack that looks intended for schlepping kayaks and other expensive outdoor gear. For those who wish to store their gear inside the car rather than on top of it, access is surprisingly limited. Upon first glance, one might think that the entire back of the car lifts open. Instead, one can only a tiny nub of the vehicle’s rear end. Toyota gamely tries to pretend this limited entry space won’t impede anyone from putting things into the trunk, showing how an entire (conveniently flat) surfboard slides into the car with ease.

Toyota seems to be particularly proud of the Crown Landscape’s matte-plastic fenders. They have visible rivets (for that extra-rugged look) and bright red mud flaps (with crown logos on them) to draw the eye toward the wheels. Indeed, the decorative wheel-arch cladding is so wide that the car doors cut into it.

Clearly, the rugged statement fenders were so aesthetically crucial that Toyota’s design department refused to compromise on them— not even for indispensable things such as car doors. Perhaps Toyota wishes to draw attention to the two-tone rims. Or Toyota may wish viewers to note that unlike some other SUVs, the Crown Landscape has substantial tires instead of thin black rubber bands stretched over rims that barely fit inside the fenders.

The Crown Landscape Has A Model-Exclusive Two-Tone Paint Scheme

In keeping with the “rugged, yet upscale” aesthetic, Toyota has chosen a two-tone paint job of military-ish green (the official name is “urban khaki”) and black. This is the only color Toyota offers. The entire vehicle is hand-painted, which Toyota states will lead to variations between vehicles. Toyota’s genteel warning that no Crown Landscape will look exactly like the other is similar to the disclaimers given about unavoidable variations between individual hand-sewn haute couture garments.

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The Crown Landscape Is Toyota’s Lifted, Rugged Luxury Sedan

It’s hard to believe that Toyota, perhaps the most conservative of mainstream car manufacturers, has put out a lifted all-terrain luxury sedan. While Toyota is by no means the inventor of sedans with extra ride height and a beefed-up frame, such vehicles are usually the work of custom body shops. While the Crown Landscape isn’t the first of its kind, it is an automotive rarity. Perhaps the closest analog to it is the AMC Eagle, which has amassed a cult following in recent years.

The Crown Landscape Promises More Fun Than The Export-Model bZ4X

Despite being a sedan (or at least, being mostly a sedan), the Crown Landscape is by all appearances a more entertaining SUV than Toyota’s exported electric SUV, the bZ4X. Toyota’s all-electric SUV looks like a perfectly adequate transporter of one’s progeny and pets. However, the Crown Landscape looks like one would at least have a bit of fun after dropping the kids off.

The Crown Landscape May Not Be The Typical JDM Vehicle, But It Is Certainly Unique

The Crown Landscape may not be the sort of vehicle that many JDM enthusiasts tend to fall for. However, like all the fun JDM vehicles worth importing, it’s not quite like anything one can get outside of Japan. Nobody is making rugged all-terrain sedans, with or without gratuitous plastic fender cladding. The Crown is an interesting choice for Toyota to turn into a rugged off-roader. It always seemed like a vehicle for business executives to drive through better-paved neighborhoods. Whether this limited edition sells out or not, it will be hard to forget.