I had a thought won­der­ing if there was ever a V12 JDM car pro­duced for road-​​going use, and after some dis­cus­sion with Van of Grand­JDM, he pointed me to the 1997 Toy­ota Cen­tury Lim­ou­sine — the only Japan­ese FR V12 pow­ered car.

Being the inquis­i­tive sort, I decided to take a look at this immense beast in some detail, and dis­cov­ered yet another JDM car with a tonne of his­tory and character.

About the Century

Named in homage to the 100 year anniver­sary of Japan becom­ing an open, trad­ing coun­try, the iconic Toy­ota Cen­tury began pro­duc­tion in 1967, built by under con­tract by Toy­ota by Kanto Auto Works, Ltd. One of the largest JDM cars of its type, the first gen­er­a­tion of the car sur­pris­ingly remained essen­tially the same for the fol­low­ing 30 years till the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion in 1997.

Almost all Toy­ota Century’s are painted black, and all are FR lay­out based, lux­ury full size 4 door sedans with 3 or 4 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sions. The first gen­er­a­tion (1967–1997) Toy­ota Cen­tury was based on the Toy­ota Crown, and so the 1967 model car­ried an upgraded ver­sion of the Toy­ota 3V 2.6L v8, bored to 3.0L. Fol­low­ing years would see upgrades to the 3V till its retire­ment in favor of the 3.4 L 4V-​​U V8 (1973), and 4.0 L 5V-​​EU V8 (1982).

It wasn’t till the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Cen­tury in 1997, that the car would receive the V12. The most expen­sive lux­ury car in the Japan­ese mar­ket received the 206KW (276HP) 1GZ-​​FE V12, a con­sid­er­able power jump from the out­go­ing 5V-EU’s 140KW (187HP) and also received a new 6 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion. It received a bevy of other fea­tures such as, elec­tri­cally clos­ing and open­ing doors, and mas­sag­ing rear seats, but styl­is­ti­cally the inte­rior and exte­rior remained almost iden­ti­cal to the 1967 model that started the namesake.

The Cen­tury is a very low vol­ume car, and while not strictly hand­made, the car is scru­ti­nized as if it was hand­made, and hence the qual­ity is extremely high. Con­sid­ered a taste­ful and con­ser­v­a­tive sign of wealth and suc­cess, the car does away with a flashy show of chrome, gold and plat­inum (often leather is dis­carded for qual­ity cloth) to reflect com­plete con­ser­vatism and hence tra­di­tional Japan­ese restraint and manners.

Made to order, the Cen­tury is also a car of choice for the Japan­ese Impe­r­ial fam­ily who ride in one of five spe­cially cus­tomized of the Cen­tury aptly named the Cen­tury Royal.

Tech­ni­cal Specifications

1st Gen­er­a­tion (1967– 1997)

Chas­sis Codes:

• VG20 (3.0L 3V)
• VG30 (3.4L 4V-​​U)
• VG40 (4.0L 5V-​​EU)
• VG45 (4.0L 5V-​​EU)

Engines : (Note the ‘V’ is not an indi­ca­tion of valve number)

• 3.0 L 3V (1967)
• 3.4 L 4V-​​U (1973)
• 4.0L 5V-​​EU (1982)
• All engines: EFI 16-​​valve OHV V8. Stan­dard unleaded petrol.
• Con­sump­tion: 16.3L/100kms combined.

Trans­mis­sions:

• 3 speed auto­matic (Floor shift, unknown designation)
• 4 speed auto­matic (1973, Floor shift, unknown designation)

Sus­pen­sion (1982):

• Front: McPher­son strut shaped spring system
• Rear: Lat­eral rod attach­ing 4 link spring system

Dimen­sions:

• Width: 74.4 in (1890 mm)
• Height: 57.1 in (1450 mm)
• Length: 201.6 in (5120 mm)
• Wheel­base: 112.2 in (2860 mm)
• Curb Weight: 3885 lb (1760 kg)

Other Fea­tures:

• Dual air conditioner
• ABS
• Power front and rear seats
• Optional leather

Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion (1997– Present)

Chas­sis Code:

• GZG50

Engine:

• 5.0 L 1GZ-​​FE V12, VVT-​​i, EFI 48-​​valve DOHC. Reg­u­lar unleaded.
• Power: 276HP/​206KW @ 5300RPM
• Peak Torque: 355 ft?lbf (481 N?m) @ 4000RPM
• Con­sump­tion: 13.8L/100kms combined

Trans­mis­sion

• 4 speed auto­matic (ECT-​​i)
• 6 speed auto­matic (ECT-​​i)

Sus­pen­sion

• Front and rear dou­ble wish­bone type air spring

Dimen­sions:

• Width: 74.4 in (1890 mm)
• Height: 58.1 in (1475 mm)
• Length: 207.5 in (5270 mm)
• Wheel­base: 119.1 in (3025 mm)
• Curb Weight: 4393 lb (1990 kg)

Other Fea­tures:

• Rear fog lamp
• ABS
• TCS (Trac­tion Control)
• Optional leather
• Dual air conditioner
• Cen­tral locking
• Power win­dows
• Tele­scopic, tilt­ing steer­ing wheel
• Power front and rear seats, with mas­sage func­tion on the rear
• In-​​car navigation
• Dri­ver, pas­sen­ger side airbags.
• Power steer­ing
• Self open­ing and clos­ing doors with con­tact latch close

Suzuki has piqued inter­est ever since the unveil­ing of the Kiza­shi con­cept back in 2007. After all, it’s not often we see a large car con­cept from the car­maker, known for it’s rally and motor­bike her­itage and a his­tory of com­pact (and very com­pe­tent) small cars.

The new Kiza­shi fol­lows some of the flow­ing lines we were shown with the Kiza­shi 2 con­cept, while clearly show­ing a refine­ment from the con­cept to an almost pro­duc­tion appear­ance. Gone are the daz­zling paint jobs, 4WD ride height, crossover sports wagon styling, and head­lights. Instead ver­sion 3 of the Kiza­shi rides on 21 inch, 9 spoke chrome wheels, sports a new, sharper head­light design, wider split grille, a more mus­cu­lar front end, and 350z style rear haunches becom­ing almost a 4 door sports car.

Along with the stun­ning styl­is­tic update come some juicy details. The new Kiza­shi will carry a 300HP ver­sion of the GM’s new DOHC 24-​​valve 3.6L V6, come with Suzuki’s advanced i-​​AWD sys­tem mated to a paddle-​​shifted 6 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion and will com­fort­ably seat 5 persons.

It’s one of the most solid close-​​to-​​production con­cepts we’ve seen and Suzuki claims we will see pro­duc­tion of the Kiza­shi in some form in 2010, with con­struc­tion planned to be at Suzuki’s new Sagara plant in Japan. Here’s to see­ing Suzuki build this, and since we’re wish­ing, we might as well throw in a wish for the X-​​HEAD too.

Kiza­shi 3 Concept:

The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.