SHOPPING IN JAPAN is an exercise in being overwhelmed by the tyranny of choice. You’re buried in an avalanche of features, specifications, colours and nested niches to the extent that you begin to wonder how this Darwinian proliferation of products is set to play out. Yet if want a Japanese production car with a V12 engine, the choice is really rather simple because there’s only one and you’re looking at it right here: the Toyota Century.
Of course there have been Japanese V12 racing engines from the likes of Isuzu, Yamaha, Nissan and Honda. The Nissan Dump Truck WD38 also sported a twelve-pot 15-litre diesel but that’s not quite the same thing.
In fact, the Century’s engine is not only the reason Lexus stopped at 10 cylinders, and is also the reason why Toyota’s luxury brand came as such a big surprise to to Western markets when it launched in 1989. While we were astonished at the quality of the original Lexus LS400, to the Japanese this was simply a more proletarian sedan than the flagship Century.
By the time the LS400 launched, the Century had been a fixture on the domestic market for 22 years. The badge
