Toyota hasn’t sold a car wearing a Crown badge in the U.S. for decades, and certainly never the current-generation luxurious Crown sedan. Could that be changing? A trademark application was recently filed on Toyota’s behalf with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the Crown name for “automobiles and structural parts thereof.”
While historically the Crown name was applied to a sedan (and its coupe or wagon variants, if applicable), recently the name has been migrating to other vehicles coming out of the FAW Toyota joint venture in China as a sub-brand, like the Chinese-market version of the Highlander—the FAW Toyota Crown Kluger—and a version of the Alphard van called the Crown Vellfire.
Toyota’s trademark filing in the U.S. for the Crown name doesn’t give us anything to go on. It’s too bad the automaker didn’t simply lay out its future plans in a quiet trademark application. So the possibilities are thus: Either Toyota just wanted to hang on to the name here (or protect it from others), or it’s planning on introducing a Crown-badged vehicle in the future. A U.S.-market Crown could take many forms, though we imagine either an SUV (like the Highlander-based Crown Kluger) or as a new fancy trim level that could be applied to multiple models, from the Camry and Avalon up to the Highlander and maybe even the Sienna minivan.
