Toyota Invents a Wacky City Car It Thinks Millennials Will Want to Buy

The Toyota U² concept looks normal from the outside, but inside it's chock full of practicality and customizability. Toyota

The Toyota U² concept looks normal from the outside, but inside it's chock full of practicality and customizability.

Toyota

The front of the vehicle includes a desk on the passenger side, an iPad instead of a center console and a redesigned shifter. The goal is to maximize usefulness. Toyota

The front of the vehicle includes a desk on the passenger side, an iPad instead of a center console and a redesigned shifter. The goal is to maximize usefulness.

Toyota

Though not exactly an El Camino, the back of the U² features a roll-back roof and rear door that turns into a ramp. Lots and lots of things could be transported in this rig. Toyota

Though not exactly an El Camino, the back of the U² features a roll-back roof and rear door that turns into a ramp. Lots and lots of things could be transported in this rig.

Toyota

The steering wheel and dash are, frankly, insane, but we like the idea of an iPad-sized screen as a control panel for the car. Toyota

The steering wheel and dash are, frankly, insane, but we like the idea of an iPad-sized screen as a control panel for the car.

Toyota

The utility rails and removable front seat maximize cargo space, making it useful for delivering goods on tight city streets, as well as filling it with mountain bikes and snowboards. Toyota

The utility rails and removable front seat maximize cargo space, making it useful for delivering goods on tight city streets, as well as filling it with mountain bikes and snowboards.

Toyota

It looks something like a Nissan Juke crossed with a Honda Element. A tennis shoe-shaped car meant for a modern city-dweller. Toyota

It looks something like a Nissan Juke crossed with a Honda Element. A tennis shoe-shaped car meant for a modern city-dweller.

Toyota

Concept cars as statements of the future: Unrestrained by safety regulations and practicality, automakers use them to show off their visions of what their products may look like in years to come. The reasonable ones often make it to production, like the Ford Atlas that presaged the 2015 F-150. The crazier ones… not so much.

Toyota’s new U^2 concept falls somewhere in between. Nicknamed the Urban Utility, it’s made by the automaker’s Calty Design Research Team. Toyota says it’s meant to “reflect the lifestyle and needs of an entrepreneurial, urban driver.” In other words, it’s made for millennials, the startup-crazy city dwellers who just aren’t buying cars the way their predecessors did.

The U² includes features that don’t often appear in production vehicles, but which the brains behind it think will appeal to young people used to customizing their smartphones. Calty packed in a utility rail system inside that can be configured to hold things like bikes or groceries, a removable front passenger seat, a retractable roof, a roll-back roof, a tailgate that can be folded into a ramp, and an iPad for a central console. By making a car infinitely customizable, owners can maximize both practicality and individuality. Naturally, the car is a small SUV, or crossover, the design trend of the decade.

The end result reminds us of “The Homer,” the convoluted car designed by Homer Simpson that included all the things he wanted, like jumbo cup holders, horns that play “La Cucaracha,” and muzzles for the kids. The U² is obviously a better (and more humane) design, but like The Homer, it’s a pile of ideas stuffed into one vehicle.

We’re on the precipice of a fundamental shift in the way cars are designed and driven. Toyota hasn’t said whether it plans to put some version of the U² into production, our guess is that it won’t. But keep an eye out for some of these features in upcoming models: If this is what the automaker thinks young car buyers want, there’s a good chance it will give it to them.