From SUV To Stretch: Inside Toyota's Unusual RAV4 Limo Project

Sometimes, the best inventions arise to serve a practical need and exploit a gap in the market. Left-handed scissors, for instance, which were introduced in 1967. Other times, creative souls devise strange and brilliant new things simply because they can. Did the world need a Toyota SUV/limo blend? Perhaps not, but it's certainly welcome.

Toyota's Takoaoka factory is home to a lot of hard-working factory employees. How does its talented staff spend their downtime? Well, that varies, but a substantial amount was spent at the factory developing a vehicle far from Toyota's conventional output.

Autophiles may think they've seen everything and admired even the most limited edition vehicle models manufacturers have devised. This RAV4 limo, however, is something entirely different. This build, as unique as the car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, seems to have been developed for fun rather than a classic heartwarming family movie, but it's just as intriguing.

Let's take a closer look at how this hybrid vehicle was made, why it even happened in the first place, and how long the enterprise took.

Toyota, the developer of SUVs like the (now returning) Land Cruiser, has to know what SUV customers are looking for. Generally speaking, versatility and roominess are two significant bonuses of this type of vehicle, and nothing screams both of those virtues quite as effectively as a stretch limo and SUV mash-up.

A worker at the Takuoka plant told the YouTube channel クルマ業界女子部チャンネル in a 2020 translated interview in the clip above that "we built this manually without any drawings," and to mess with the core body of the original RAV4 as little as possible, the reportedly 200-strong team lengthened the center of the SUV. The welded metal for this vehicle section was designed to be as sturdy as possible, another Toyota employee told the visiting YouTubers in 2020. "After that body was made, we tested the strength with a hoist," he said, indicating that the workers ensured the custom build was practical and attractive.

The interior boasts a hand-painted and hand-stitched checked pattern on the dash, an olive leaf motif to celebrate the Tokyo Olympics that year, and a chandelier for a decadent finish. At 26 feet long, Frankenstein's limo is almost twice the length of the standard 2020 RAV4, which measures 15.1 feet. It's quite the modification for a hobby project completed over four months of stolen moments when other work was finished.