Excerpts from the Toyota newsroom:

The Toyota ME.WE concept car is the innovative result of a partnership between Toyota European Design & Development (ED2) and Jean-Marie Massaud, the renowned creative designer acclaimed for his visionary projects in design and architecture. For ED2, which signed a partnership agreement with Studio Massaud in July 2011, it's all about learning from a unique collaboration leading to a project that marks a paradigm shift compared to traditional vehicle design and engineering. For Jean-Marie Massaud, the ambition is to 'instill' human, economic and environmental challenges into a realistic conception of an 'anti-crisis car for today.

The shared vision between the design centre of one of the world's largest car manufacturers and the visionary independent designer has produced a unique concept with 3 primary aims:

the vision of Jean-Marie Massaud is that of a car user with a keen eye for personal travel. "By losing sight of reality and as a result of an idealised approach, the car has become an accumulation of constraints more than a source of freedom. However, our lives and needs require more adaptability, simplicity and lightness. The car of today should be seen as a personal mobility solution that can deliver more," says Massaud. In other words, drivers find themselves in a perennial duality: on the one hand, a plethora of promises that support egos and social status through excessive hype about innovation. And, on the other hand, an ongoing frustration with daily constraints.

Based on his discussions with ED2, Massaud identified a number of inconsistencies in the way we appreciate and understand the car. He then offers counter-arguments to these paradoxes. He juxtaposes desire with pleasure, status with utility, space with capacity, power with agility, performance with suitability, segmentation with adaptation, and stress with serenity.

With ME.WE, the designer has delivered a solution that is realisable here and now, and which, far from subscribing to excessive technology in the name of 'always more', offers a response that is rooted primarily in reality and today's concerns surrounding collective responsibility and individual good citizenship. The goal of the TOYOTA ME.WE is nothing less than to be the summation of these essentially paradoxical challenges. It is not the reinvention of the car, but rather a vehicle for everyone, which adopts a different take on the pleasure that is simpler, more appropriate and more realistic (easy to park, adaptable to different lifestyles and delivering maximum pleasure in use): in fact, a real alternative to cars of 'passion' and status.