Skunkworks – Part two

Surprising though it is, one of the purest skunkwork projects – a real one, not just one onto which the tag was later slapped by marketing people milking the cool factor – comes from one of the most reasonable, measured and downright sensible car companies of all: Toyota.

The game-changing G21 Prius, progenitor of a line of Toyota hybrid electric vehicles that’s about to top 30 million sales, stemmed from a question posed by an 80-year-old man and the response from a 10-man team.

In September 1993 Toyota’s honorary chairman Eiji Toyoda, still a provocative forward-thinker going into his ninth decade, called for ‘a new vision for cars, one for the medium and long term that would prepare us for the 21st century.’