This month, Toyota's California design studio, Calty, celebrates its 50th anniversary. By way of marking the occasion, Toyota is showing off some of the concepts that never made it outside of the studio, including a mid-engine halo sports car called the MX-2. A could-have-been rival to Acura's NSX?Calty, which takes its name as a portmanteau of California and Toyota, was the first U.S.-based design studio for a Japanese automaker.
Instead Calty gave us the 1989 Celica and the 1990 Previa. Admittedly, for pragmatic everyday cars, those were pretty daring designs. Even better, Calty would eventually design the 2006 FJ Cruiser, bringing the charms of the round-headlight vintage Land Cruiser to a modern age.More tantalizing is the MX-2 concept and its gullwing doors .