Toyota reveals Shooting Brake concept car

Toyota has today revealed a sleek new prototype car, the 86 Shooting Brake Concept, providing a sneak peek into the minds of Toyota's design team.

Although the Melbourne-based Toyota design team that came up with the striking design maintains this is purely a one-off concept car that will never reach production, there's huge pent-up demand for more Toyota 86 products.

Mazda is understood to be considering an MX-5-based shooting brake, but Nicolas Hogios, Toyota Australia's design chief and the driving force behind the concept, said it's highly unlikely the 86 Shooting Brake would ever reach production.

"Personally of course I'd love to see this car on the road, but there's obviously production realities and affordability," he said.

"However, as it stands this concept shows we're willing to try new things, we love cars, we have a huge passion for cars, we're all enthusiasts," observed Hogios. "This one was a particular project we wanted to explore, and the fact it got this far is amazing."

The two-door Toyota 86 Shooting Brake Concept, which was hand-built in Japan based on a scale model, delivers "more rear head room and cargo space" said Hogios, and the longer roof also allows drivers more scope to use roof racks to load bikes, skis or even surfboards.

The Toyota 86 for those who want more practicality? It's a tempting proposition, and one that the Toyota 86's global chief engineer, Tetsuya Tada, jumped on when he saw it for the first time as a scale model back in November 2014.

"I was totally surprised – and I liked it so much I arranged for my expert takumi prototype craftsmen to hand-build the Shooting Brake concept based on the Australian design," Tada-san said.

"The concept car is a fully functional, driveable vehicle that has been put through its paces on Toyota test tracks," he said.

Hogios praised the prototype builders for their working, full-scale reproduction of the model.

"It was the hard work of the Japanese team under Tada-san that made it happen," he said.

"You can do as many simulations as you want, but we've modelled it, built it by hand and driven it, and that raw feeling is incredible," said the Aussie designer.

Hogios revealed to motoring.com.au that the fully-drivable vehicle retains all the dynamics of the 86 coupe, and although none of the vehicle's underpinnings or powertrain elements have been tweaked, it drives a little differently now.

"I've been in the passenger seat around the test course in Japan. It was driven in anger, absolutely," he said, noting that some of the test drivers preferred the show car's handling.

With Aussie ingenuity and the backing of the world's largest car maker, Toyota, this stunning concept proves there's still passion within the company to push the boundaries and shirk its 'conservative' image.