Original story by John Carey first published in Drive on 5 June, 1998
This is the Progres ... But what's progressive about building a brand new Toyota that looks very much like a middle-aged Mercedes?
From the side at least, the Progres is 100 per cent Stuttgart style. It has the trademark proportions – stubby nose, tall rear – of a Mercedes-Benz C Class. And it also adheres to the technical blueprint favoured by Benz, with six-cylinder engines – in-line 2.5- and 3.0-litre – and rear-drive.
If only the designers had had the courage, or gall, to stick to their plagiaristic principles. The nose is a four-eyed disaster and the rear is uprightly staid.
The Progres, happily, is destined never to leave Japan. The target audience, the brochures suggest, is cardigan-wearing empty-nesters. And the looks, while not instantly attractive, are guaranteed to grow on you.
Beneath the Progres there's an attractive car waiting to get out. The platform is shared with the Lexus IS200 sedan, a pretty and compact challenger to the Mercedes C Class and BMW 3 Series, which is scheduled to reach Australia early next year. It will have an in-line 2.0-litre six-cylinder engine and will be the first Lexus sold here with a manual transmission option. Now that is progress. John Carey
Why did Toyota make the Progres?
In short, to capture a slice of the compact luxury sedan market in its native Japan; think BMW 3 Series, think Mercedes-Benz C Class.
But what the Progres lacked was brand cache and, well, that intangible European flair.
Sure, as a Toyota, the Progres traded on the brand’s reputation for dependability and reliability, but one look at its mashed-up styling told a different story, a tale of a brand unsure of its place in the pecking order.
First shown at the 1997 Tokyo motor show, the Toyota Progres failed to excite from the outset. With a French-sounding name, the Progres (pronounced pro-grey) came in two variants, NC250 and NC300.
The NC stood for ‘Neo Category’, a statement of Toyota’s intent to redefine its domestic line-up with a compact luxury saloon that could take on the Euros. Interestingly, the Progres featured no Toyota branding whatsoever.
And despite its Neo Category classification, there was nothing ‘neo’ about the Toyota Progres.
With a platform and drivetrain pilfered variously from the Mark II (known in Australia as the Cressida) and Crown S150 sedans, the Progres was more ‘paleo’ than ‘neo’.
Still, Toyota crammed its catalogue of luxury features into its new compact saloon, and by that measure, the Progres could compete with its European rivals.
Sitting on 15-inch alloy wheels, the Progres featured lashings of leather upholstery, power-adjustable front seats, walnut wood interior trim, power windows, locks, and power-folding side mirrors, a power-adjustable steering column, and dual-zone automatic climate control.
That’s on top of six airbags (a lot for the era), voice-activated satellite navigation, automatic head-lights and rain-sensing windscreen wipers.
As nice as it was on the inside, there was no escaping its confused exterior design. With the dimensions and profile of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class but with styling cues from the W210 E-Class, the Toyota Progres looked like the derivative mash-up it was.
The quad headlight treatment with one round lamp and the other a sort of rhomboid-rectangle, deserves special mention, lending the front end of the Progres an awkward and gawky countenance, a Temu ‘poor man’s Merc’.
Littler wonder then that Japanese buyers didn’t exactly bash down the doors of dealerships looking to snaffle a Progres and by 2007, production had ceased with no indication of how many had rolled out of Toyota City’s Motomachi plant.
The best thing about the Toyota Progres? Its platform and drivetrain was used to create the retro-inspired Toyota Origin, a limited run of sedans reminiscent of the original Toyota Crown.
Built to celebrate the 100 millionth car built by Toyota in Japan (we’re tipping not too many of those were the awkward Progres), the Origin featured many of the original Crown’s features including ‘suicide’ doors, that iconic chromed and slatted grille, and a wrap-around rear window.
And while only around 1100 were produced, the Origin looked cool and interesting in a way that the Progres could only dream of. RM
Rob Margeit is an award-winning Australian motoring journalist and editor who has been writing about cars and motorsport for over 25 years. A former editor of Australian Auto Action, Rob’s work has also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Wheels, Motor Magazine, Street Machine and Top Gear Australia. Rob’s current rides include a 1996 Mercedes-Benz E-Class and a 2000 Honda HR-V Sport.
