Toyota has revealed two crazy Camry concepts, one with seven cylinders and the other with a chandelier, at the 24-hour Super Taikyu Race in Japan over the weekend.
The seven-cylinder concept was developed by Gazoo Racing. The mildest thing about the car is its white paint, which wouldn’t look out of place at an airport taxi rank.
Sitting close to ground, the Gazoo concept sports wide wheel-arch extensions, a high-rise rear wing, and side-exit exhausts.
Looking for your next car? We’ll help you research and compare so you choose with confidence.
Under the bonnet lives the 224kW 1.6-litre turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine that powers the GR Yaris and GR Corolla.
Where things go really crazy is at the back, with the company’s still-under-development 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder living in the boot. Laid out in a transverse configuration, the new turbo four makes around 300kW and drives the rear wheels.
It’s unclear what transmissions are used in the concept, but the two-engine layout is a novel way of getting around the structural issues inherent with straight-seven and V7 engines.
Gazoo’s seven-cylinder Camry isn’t the first production-based concept to feature two petrol engines. Two notable earlier examples include the mid-1980s 164kW Volkswagen Scirocco Bi-Motor featuring two 1.6-litre four-cylinder engines from the Golf GTI, and the 1998 Mercedes-Benz A38 AMG Prototype, which had two 1.9-litre four-cylinder engines making a total of 186kW.
The other concept on display over the weekend was developed by Toyota Racing.
With its Bōsōzoku-inspired styling, it’s somehow even more outlandish than its seven-cylinder cousin. It has a ground-scraping front splitter, extended wheel-arches, a long rear deck spoiler, and four massive upward-pointing exhausts.
Inside it’s just as crazy with a fur-lined dashboard, a green chandelier above the rear seats, a cigar holder in the centre console, and an 1980s-style electronic instrumentation pack. In honour of Toyota’s decision to import Kentucky-built Camrys to Japan, the gear shifter features a glass of bourbon.
The mechanical package is a little more conventional, and features the aforementioned 300kW 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot. Unlike regular road-going Camrys, though, the engine is mounted longitudinally and drives the rear wheels.
Images throughout this article are screenshots from videos by Nikolai Aksenov and Matt Watson.
