Which raises the question, why a lounge interior in a motor vehicle? Schneider has a ready answer: "Younger people are hanging out in their cars. When they do that, the car becomes an entertainment area. The F3R expands on that concept. It's a sophisticated extension of the home."

To create that extension, the design team came up with three very modern looking sets of seats. Each is unique, composed of modern, metal-edged bottoms and asymmetrical backs whose symmetry is completed by semi-integrated headrests. They can provide roomy, comfortable seating for eight adult passengers.

Up front, the driver's seat reclines and swivels, and the passenger seat reclines to form a comfortable chaise. In the middle, the right and center sections of the 40/20/40-percent second-row seats fold into the floor and the left-hand seat reclines fully to form, with the rearmost or third row, an avant-garde sofa built around the sort of conversation area you might find in an upscale home.

This is surrounded by a casual, wrap-around backrest formed by the continuous, flowing curve of the instrument panel, doors and rear seatback panels. These are accented by fiber-optic lighting panels in the seat sides, and in Toyota F3R's right-center grand entry, that can be lit to provide illumination during lounge chat sessions.

But there's more to do here than just chat. That's because Schneider equipped the F3R with two track-mounted flat-panel video screens. These allow the vehicle's occupants to enjoy movies or games whenever they want, and to do so in complete comfort, with control supplied by an audio / video / lighting remote unit that docks in Toyota F3R's dash.

The lounge mode would be useful any time the vehicle is not moving, Schneider said, adding, "It would be ideal when you take the kids to games or sporting events, or when you're just hanging out with friends. It's a living room away from home." But if Toyota F3R is a living room away from home, it also offers a very comfortable and very useable motor-vehicle interior. Seating, in transport mode, is stadium-style, with each row just a little higher than the row in front of it to provide optimal passenger comfort and visibility. And it provides convenient three-door access on both sides to reflect adult-size space in all three rows.

To enhance Toyota F3R's utility, its center-row seats stow individually, and the center seat in the middle row can be configured as a "front and center" child seat.

Schneider took special care to design a unique three-tier instrument panel that is, like the interior itself, dual-mode. He explained, "The upper strip, right below the windshield, has two modes - one for driving and one for lounge. When driving, it has warning lights, the transmission shift indicator, a clock and some audio. When in lounge mode, it turns an ambient blue.

"The second tier is the main meter panel for the driver. It houses all the driving functions - the speedometer, the tachometer, the fuel gauge, the screen for a navigation system and the multi-info screen for the hybrid system monitor. The lower tier is the control board with switches for controlling lights and the climate control, supplemented of course by steering-wheel switches."

But that's not all. On the far right-hand side of this lower panel is the detachable remote-control module that can be taken into the F3R's lounge to control the audio and video systems and the lounge lighting.

Schneider's design emphasizes environmentally sensitive materials, in keeping with the theme of environmental sensitivity suggested by the Hybrid Synergy Drive badging on Toyota F3R. These materials include floor panels made from Ecoresin, a specially formulated resin that can be recycled; and a skin-friendly simulated leather seating material called Mythos that, unlike most plastics, does not produce the harmful chemical dioxin when it is burned.

Cartabiano's starting point for Toyota F3R's exterior shape, meanwhile, featured a van that conveyed maximum volume, with a tall, wedged body shape that incorporated wide, dynamic shoulders, with its sporty 22-inch wheels and wide performance tires planted at the extreme boundaries of all four corners.

previous page | go to page 3