Featured Toyota bZ Sdn Prototype Spotted

It is spotted - and other patterns too.

 

Now, that is car prototype camo. There is even blocks under the film to distort the sheet metal lines.

 

Looks alot like they're trying to design a Dodge Charger muscle car... Lol, Toyota designers are hilarious... Is it really realistic for someone to even want to steal their design secrets? Is there any history to these kinds of design thefts, or just standard operating procedure just in case?

 

If you think this

Looks like this

Then the camo worked.

Design patents are a thing, but I think it is mostly about keeping details secret for the big reveals. The camo is going to draw more attention on the street, but it gives away less in the event an observant person notices an uncovered car is something totally new.

 

Yes the Charger style of a front end that sits higher and wider with rear quarter panels that also sit higher and wider that results in shorter height to the windows is the similarity between the two.

And much like the so-called "leaks" of the next new iPhone or Samsung phone, I suspect it's more about creating intrigue and mystery prior to new design debut than protecting design secrets. And when you got guys like Elon doing a a debut as weird as the cyber truck, do old school car makers really have any ground to stand on anymore? I mean if you compare Tesla market value to other car makers...

 

Last one is a Camry.

The high belt line leading to shorter rear windows and big butt has been the current design trend for some time. The Dodge has more of the old school trunk lid. This means the roof line has to descend sooner, making the rear windows smaller. The BEV has a hint of a trunk lid, like the Camry and most other sedans. It could be a hatchback for all we know. Toyota calls the Prius a sedan.

The hood bump and vertical grill make the Dodge front look wider and bigger. The quarter panel slope doesn't look much different than the Camry's.

The BEV's beltline dips down along the doors. This makes the front and rear fenders appear bigger. The Camry has the same feature. The grill has a negative slope to the Camry's positive, like a Tesla. Then there is the fake intakes at the corners. The front quarter panels of the BEV flare up higher than the hood. From the 3/4 picture, it reminds me of the Corvette's. Maybe there is an aero benefit to that.

 

Yea, I can't stand the front corner fake air intakes... Not a good place for stuff like that because most minor car damage happens on those corners.

 

The camo had filled those corners in. Makes the front end look 'meatier'.

I agree the camo is mostly about publicity for the model. The reveal for China is next month.

 

Sedans .... even as these types of models begin to wane, from manufacturers & numbers - Toyota decides to try & revive them?
.

 

We'd better stop driving land-yachts sooner rather than later, as both resource depletion and climate change come to demolish us.

I've owned:

American muscle car
Full-size SUV
2-door sports coupe
Pickup truck
Small mini-van
Lift-back sedan (Prius)

By far my favorite for practicality is the last one.

People driving around single-occupant in Escalades, Expeditions, Tundras, F-150s and so on is the height of stupidity. Hopefully, $8 a gallon gas will come soon to demolish those vehicle types.

 

The irony is that those big heavy vehicles that put them higher up than most vehicles are desired because they "feel more safe" to the owner. And how safe are they when a wildfire in the dead of winter burns down over a thousand houses in Colorado and was the most destructive fire in the state history a few months back? And how safe are they when insurance companies are being forced to cover the losses of over 100K homes burning down in California in less than a decade? And what about Portland, Oregon hitting a 120' temps in a heat wave last June that killed hundreds in the greater region and ensured that the city now has an all time higher temperature than even Miami, Florida? We're gonna need a lot of body bags, as well as the future of our children just so giant vehicles can continue to make their owner's feel safe.

 

When you make the front end look "meatier" you imply there's hundreds of horsepower in there that requires a large enclosure. There's gonna be lots of people that will consider this a fake muscle car, no matter how much power is under the hood.

 

I like what Dave Berry said about that:

...in the sense of, "you, personally, will be safe, although every now and then you may have to clean the remains of other motorists out of your wheel wells.''

 

As far as illusions of being safer - there is an issue with pickup/suv's - ie; rollovers. It's likely big car rollover scenario has improved over the past couple decades but it still exists. Watched it happen with a 250 pick up, less than a year ago. Crushed passengers. So much for safety in a high seating vehicle. There's only a single larger vehicle that seems to be virtually roll over proof;

.

 

Toyota sells a lot of corolla's and Camry's. These are highly profitable vehicles. The tesla model 3 is the best selling vehicle in some countries. The sedan is not dead.

When you think of a plug-in the mid sized sedan or mid sized hatchback makes a lot of sense. The better aerodynamics mean the battery will provide more mileage on higher speed trips. People pay more for smoother engines and better performance and a plug-in (bev and phev) sedan provides both. A Sedan can provide better handling than an SUV or pick up truck, although spend enough money like Rivian or porsche and you can make a great handling vehicle.

A toyota BZ sedan makes perfect sense if they execute it well. A ground up phev sports sedan might even make more sense given toyota has most of the pieces in the rav4 prime. BEV suv's can be much safer than their conventional engine counterparts as they can have a much better center of gravity and better crumple zones.

 

The meatier appearance is because of "falsies" in the grill area and front corners. They are part of the camo used on prototype cars. Giving the viewer a false impression of the car's design is part of the tactics the camo uses to hide what the car is, and the bZ sedan's camo has worked on you.

 

I wasn't speaking about the grill area at all... Was talking about the height of fenders and hood make it look like a fake muscle car...

 

You had responded to a post where I used meatier to refer to the entire front end, and it is mostly because of the corners being filled in. They make the fenders look more pronounced by giving them a more solid appearing base to stand on. With the masking off, the EV doesn't look much different than Toyota's other sedans. It likely doesn't have a frunk, so the designers decided to drop the hood a bit.

That is what gives the fenders their tall appearance. There could be an aero benefit in them for channeling air flow. Other sedans also have the flair to the top of the fender, they need a taller hood to accommodate the engine though. But we are looking at just one photo here with lighting that could be creating an illusion. It, and the one of the camoed car, were taken by somebody passing by on their phone. The fenders might be as pronounced as those of a BMW. A sporty car, but not one called a muscle car.

Which brings us back to the main point, the camo actually worked. You are seeing muscle car elements that simply aren't there, and there is more design pieces that give a modern muscle car their signature look than just the fenders; snub nose hood and protruding front bumper are bigger pieces. Pieces that aren't even on Toyota sports cars. The closest Toyota designers get in making the unibody SUVs look more truck like.

Give this sedan a higher seating position, and the front will look a lot like the bZ4X's.