These Three JDM Toyotas You've Never Heard Of WiLL Let You Live Your Y2K Fantasy

The turn of the 21st century was an exciting time, as the world was thrust into the futuristic-sounding year 2000. Toyota wanted to make a splash in the new millennium with its funky WiLL vehicles. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t recognize these wacky little cars; they were only sold in small numbers in Japan for a few years, but I remember seeing them in Japanese car magazines on the Barnes and Noble magazine rack as a kid, and I finally got curious enough to investigate their story.

Developed as the result of a joint venture between Toyota and several other Japanese companies, WiLL was intended to be a family of products aimed at those elusive and trendy millennials who wanted products that express their individuality. Other companies that produced WiLL-branded products include Asahi Brewery which produced a WiLL beer, and Matsushita Electric Industrial Company which produced a WiLL PC and refrigerator. Toyota’s contribution was three specially designed small cars intended to appeal primarily to women in their late 20s, the WiLL Vi, the WiLL Cypha, and the WiLL VS, with the Vi and VS names pronounced as letters, like “vee-eye” and “vee-ess.”

Readers may also remember Toyota’s American-market attempt to lure younger buyers into its showrooms, a funky little sub-brand called Scion. Similar to the Scion recipe, Toyota dreamed up the JDM WiLL vehicles based on pre-existing Toyota platforms, so the Vi and the Cypha were both based on the JDM Toyota Vitz which was basically our Toyota Echo at the time, and the VS was based on the Corolla platform. The WiLL-brand vehicles were based on Toyotas but never had any exterior Toyota badges.

I am always a fan of funky cars that take styling and design risks, and the WiLL trio is no exception. They may all be based on boring Toyota platforms, but at least they looked distinctive and exciting, something that couldn’t be said of the standard Toyotas at the time. This video shows more of both the WiLL Vi and the Cypha, though it is not in English and there are no English subtitles available, but it’s still cool to see!