Don’t call it an SUV—the 2023 Toyota Crown, reviewed

Enlarge / An endangered species, the sedan is starting to adapt to the new crossover-based environment. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The sedan might not be properly extinct like non-avian dinosaurs, but it has certainly fallen out of favor with the car-buying public. That's a topic that Toyota knows plenty about—even as the SUV becomes ascendant, its Camry sedan remains the nation's best-selling vehicle that isn't a pickup, crossover, or SUV. So its designers were evidently reading the tea leaves when it came time to replace the Avalon. That replacement is called the Crown, and while it definitely checks the "four doors and a trunk" criteria, its bold styling makes it the most SUV-like sedan I've encountered in some time.

The Crown shares its TNGA-K platform with other large Toyotas and Lexuses, including the aforementioned Camry, plus SUVs like the Venza, Highlander, and RX, and even a minivan. Those are all largely conventional, ignoring for the moment Lexus' large cheese grater grille.

The Crown is less conventional, starting with a height that's almost four inches taller than the Camry—60.6 inches (1,539 mm) despite near-identical ground clearance. It's the same width as a Camry (72.4 inches or 1,840 mm depending on which flavor you speak) but four inches longer at 196.1 inches (4,980 mm), and with an inch-longer wheelbase (112.2 inches/2,850 mm). And it conforms—sort of—to the three-box shape one expects of a sedan.