Special-edition Toyota Crown Landscape is ready to go off-roading

With a relatively generous amount of ground clearance and a fastback-like silhouette, the Toyota Crown blurs the line between a sedan and a crossover. It's channeling its off-roading genes into a special-edition model called Landscape that features rally-inspired design updates.

Unveiled for the Japanese market, the Crown Landscape looks like it was built for the SEMA show. And yet, check your calendar: April Fool's was four days ago. This isn't a joke, an aftermarket tuner's wild hallucination turned into a one-off, or a concept; it's apparently real and it's headed to production. It sits about an inch higher than the regular-production Crown, and it's finished in a two-tone black and Urban Khaki paint job. Toyota also added edition-specific 18-inch wheels, all-terrain tires, and wheel arch flares hand-painted in a color called Gori Gori Black.

Red mudflaps remind us of Toyota's rally cars, and the Landscape comes standard with a hitch. It offers a maximum towing capacity of about 1,650 pounds, so it's not going to tow your GR Corolla to the next track day but it should be capable of pulling a small camper with ease. If the 15.2-cubic-foot trunk isn't big enough, Toyota offers an optional, dealer-installed roof rack that motorists can mount a storage basket to.

The changes made to the Landscape's interior are more subtle. The cabin gets black upholstery, black trim and a "Landscape" emblem on the passenger's side of the dashboard. Like the standard Crown, the off-roading model comes standard with split-folding rear seats.

It doesn't sound like Toyota made mechanical changes to the Landscape. Based on the RS trim, it's powered by a gasoline-electric hybrid drivetrain that consists of a turbocharged, 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine, a pair of electric motors (one per axle) and a nickel-metal hybride battery pack. This is the most powerful drivetrain in the Crown range, and it spins the four wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission.

Pricing for the Crown Landscape starts at 6,850,000 Japanese yen, which represents about $45,300 at the current conversion rate. For context, the regular Crown RS costs 6,700,000 yen (around $44,300). What does this mean for the American market? Your guess is as good as ours. Asked if the Landscape is headed here, Toyota told Autoblog that it can't comment on future product plans. Wait and see, then.

Related video: