Isn't the average Japanese taxi some big Toyota Crown sedan already? How much more premium than that can you go?
Toyota Century :)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-new-emperor-picks-his-ri...
Edit: Super short TL;DR from the article
> Introduced in 1967, the Century isn’t for the flashy or hasty. Prospective customers can wait months because Toyota hand-builds each one. Background checks ensure the buyer is of an appropriate caliber, and not a member of an “antisocial organization”—a Japanese euphemism for the yakuza crime syndicates.
It's only sold in Japan.
Edit 2: Some more information courtesy of Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Century
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Comfort
The Century was designed for CEOs and heads of state, the Comfort was designed as a general purpose Taxi.
Reminds me of mobsters in America driving Cadillac’s and how much that probably helped sales. I know my dad loved watching mob movies and bought a Cadillac in the 90s that was straight out of the movies.
I’m curious if there was a badass motivation there similar to middle class suburbanites owning a Harley style motorcycle.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%83%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%...
Hmmm; From my limited time in Japan / Tokyo, almost all the cars were Toyota Comforts [1]. I have not entered in a more basic and rudimentary vehicle in 25 years.
I mean, it's _fine_. Whatever. Gets you from point A to point B. You get a feeling it'll likely do so reliably, and if not, virtually everything might be fixable with a hammer. But I wouldn't have called it premium...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Comfort
P.S. The "Automatic rear doors", at least in the versions I've been in, is basically a string/lever that goes from driver to the rear door. Again, it _works_, but when I hear "Japan" and "Automatic", my mind conjures a rather different picture. However, that was true of much of my personal experience in Japan - pragmatic and reliable automation, over fancy image. And cassette tapes everywhere... :P
No, it's not that great nor that comfortable, but most of the time a Taxi ride is less than 10 minutes so it does not matter very much.