Mitsuhisa Kato

"I Can't Let the Crown Die on My Watch"

In the 2000s, Toyota accelerated its overseas expansion and pursued growth in scale, and cars and regions that sold well came to be given priority. Crown sales were in steady decline, and it was amid a sense of crisis that the Crown might someday disappear if this continued that the 12th generation arrived. Mitsuhisa Kato, who led its development, set out to rebuild the Crown with the single thought, "I can't let the Crown die on my watch," and developed the platform and engine from zero, aiming for world-class driving performance. This "Zero Crown" revealed a new direction: "the Crown that drives." President Akio Toyoda, who told this story at the launch of the 16th generation, had just begun driver training under his mentor Naruse at the time, and says he still vividly remembers feeling the Zero Crown's fine driving with his own senses.