Can The Toyota BZ4X Be Saved With A Vinyl Cutter?

My car identifying skills have suffered a bit over the years, but I can still be pretty sure when I’m looking at a late model product or something that was on its third owner.

I was sort of shocked the other day when I saw a car that appeared to new but somehow had all of the trappings of something that went off of warranty years ago. You know the look- black primer over the rusted wheel arches, unpainted replacement front fenders from some altercation, strange Autozone tape stripes in back. The car I saw even had a strange combination of those chrome stick-on badges you also get at a car parts store in back; something like bZ4X. Is that an allusion to some meme?

Look, I’m not being serious, but in the few cases where I’ve seen the rather rare Toyota entry into the full EV market I do get some of those feelings:

It’s actually been a bit since the bZ4X was introduced for the 2023 model year; I have not warmed to its looks yet and I doubt that I ever will. Honestly, I don’t think I’m alone since sales have been surprisingly tepid; only 18,570 bZ4X found buyers last year (which is still a vast improvement over the 9,329 sold in 2023). You would think that the first real fully-electric car from one of the world’s largest and most respected car makers would be a gangbusters hit. Toyota essentially invented the whole hybrid market two decades ago; this thing should have put the Tesla Model Y and 3 on notice.

Instead, this thing is struggling to even be a niche player, and we’ve pointed out a number of reasons why. The range is about 50 miles short of what it really should be, it might not qualify for certain tax credits, and the cabin is not especially large. Virtually everyone has laughed at the “Bees Forks” name of Toyota’s latest EV, and more than a few commenters have torn into the appearance of Toyota’s EV, including on this site:

Whoa, they let loose on this thing! They weren’t even done, and I didn’t even pull all of them from the various bZ4X posts:

Harsh words there, and I don’t necessarily disagree. Notice that there are some Toyota People in there as well so that’s doubly damning. Indeed, the Toyota name alone should be worth enough to outweigh those issues for many, but that’s not enough.

The sad thing is that the basic shape of the bZ4X is hardly ugly; maybe not ultra-distinctive but not even remotely offensive. I do think that the car is salvageable with some quick cosmetic modifications, or at least worth a try.

4X In The Road

The real question many have is why the Bees Forks looks the way it does in the first place? Going back a ways to when Jason first reviewed the bZ4X, the reasoning he got from the staff on hand was that they wanted an appearance that set it apart from the Prius and their other hybrids. They apparently were searching for a different approach to the looks as opposed to assimilating the styling into their ICE lineup. Sure, that’s fine, but the looks of their primary hybrid, the Prius, have finally reached a point where they’re quite pleasing.

The bZ4X, on the other hand, looks like it could be any one of the myriad Chinese EVs you see pictures of on this site, though many of those pull of the look much better. What’s even more damning is that Toyota has been showing concepts for another upcoming bZ-family EV that features little of the strange aesthetic of the current car. Honestly, despite the spokesperson’s pitch to Jason, it looks far more like a Prius (and much better):

The BZ4x is trying to be different, but it’s also attempting to do some other things with the styling to fool your eyes; I don’t think it’s really succeeding at either.

Why the black trim? I am just making a wild-ass guess here, but my feeling is that at some point a designer at Toyota did a concept sketch for the bZ4X that looked much like this vaporware that the “new” Delorean company has shown:

This basic shape has appeared on screens of students and car designers around the world for the last decade; type “future off roader” into Google, hit “images” and you’ll see a bunch of them. There’s a reason that it’s never seen the light of day; regulations in most countries won’t allow for such open wheel layouts to hit the street.

I could be totally off, but my feeling is that Toyota thought that they could replicate this appearance by just throwing black “fillers” into what would have been the open areas of their initial concept to replicate the look. They even imagined that such an eye trick would make the wheel wells appear bigger and, in turn, the tires seem much more Baja 1000-worthy.

As many have pointed out, it just doesn’t work. Instead of making the viewer see tough off-roader the end result unfortunately looks a lot like the Chicago Twingo that Mercedes Streeter reported on recently where the brave owner found a new black primer-covered replacement front fender but didn’t have the time or scratch available to paint it body color:

In back it’s much of the same. The dog-bone taillight gives the appearance of a RAV4 that’s been crying after horrible dinner party and now black mascara is running down her cheeks. Again, it looks like vestiges of something on an earlier concept that didn’t make the production cut and now we just have this awkward appendage left over. Overall, it’s a rather unfortunate looking piece and the styling can’t be helping sales.

Here’s my biggest fear, though; in a few years we’ll need a third car for the kids to get to school and activities in. My wife will likely want to buy used electric, and with Cars I Buy, Maintain And Fix But Never Drive my rule is usually anything as long as it’s a Toyota. I was in denial that some time I’d be writing a check for an RX300 or an LX570, and sure enough the day came for each of them. But this? How could I live with the Bees Forks in my driveway? Well, I have Photoshop, and at the office a nice vinyl cutter and $35,000 3D printer at my disposal (with spools of ABS) after hours. Time to put them to work.

Let’s Stick A 4X In It

Before we do anything else, I simply can’t type that stupid name one more time. Yes, I know that “bZ4X” is supposed to be the first of a combination of letters and numbers to signify a family of electric vehicles that Toyota is introducing. I really don’t care; I know that Declan McManus and Marshall Mathers had reasons for their names but they would never have become pop stars with such titles. We’ve got to change the name. Sorry Bees Forks, you’re now the Toyota Cresta.

First, the wheel arches get covered in vinyl to match the body color (or we wrap the whole thing), leaving just the black lip around the openings visible. I’ve left the fake brake air intakes since they actually look decent. In front, I’ve added more body-colored vinyl on the strip between the headlights for a slimmer look. The nose is just too much of an expanse so there I’ve added a black vinyl pattern based on other current Toyota cars like the Camry and Crown to break up the space. If we want, I can 3D print a grille pattern to match the pattern above. I’ve even added some body color above the headlights since those black gaps just look like pop up lights that don’t fit properly.

Here’s the original car:

The modified one:

..and the animation of the two:

In the rear, the lower part of the dog bone ends are covered up to create a simple band taillight; here I’ll do the opposite of the grille and put some black vinyl across for a uniform height left to right. Here’s the original car:

You’ll also see that some models of bZ4X (like the one shown) have these odd “winglets” coming off of the sides of the hatch just above the rear window. BMW does a bit of this as well so it’s a common current styling feature, and personally I think it’s sill 2025 versions of 1950s tailfins. I doubt that they improve aerodynamics, and it looks like the ears on Pikachu’s head. I’d 3D print a piece to fill the gap between the two pieces as seen above, maybe even adding an auxiliary fog light so that Jason won’t complain about me running the hazard flashers in bad weather.

The modified car:

The animation of the original and new:

Oh, and one last thing based on Jason’s ask from his initial review; as expected he hated the lack of frunk on the bZ4X-now-Cresta:

He asked if we could at least have a very shallow frunk for charging cables or small items so you won’t have to unload the cargo area to get to them (yes, I forgot to add a cutout for the washer filler):

Have we made the Busy Forks blander? You might say that, but if so, I’ve done my job. Seriously, let’s keep some things in mind. First of all, the main competitor for this thing is likely a Tesla, and Model 3 and Model Ys are hardly had the most standout styling when they were introduced years ago; they look even less distinctive now. Say what you want about them, but the entry-level Teslas are hardly hurting in the sales department; their 2024 numbers of 189,903 Model 3s and a whopping 372,113 Model Ys impressive. That’s thirty-one times what the world’s largest auto maker could muster with their bZ4X. Rising EV sellers like the Prologue are hardly rocking the boat with their styling; the clean-looking minimal-bullshit Ioniq 5 and Mustang Mach E are also finding plenty of buyers.

Second, and more importantly, Toyotas have always been known for conservative reliability; the shopper that goes into the showroom to meet Jan is typically not pining for an outrageous looking car. Toyota buyers historically want a “nice looking” machine that won’t express non-existent individuality. The reputation is what sells these things, not the styling. Laugh all you want, but it’s made them one of the world’s biggest auto makers. Seriously, I don’t really even like most Toyotas but I’ve spent tens of thousands on them over the last twenty years, and will do so again.

Maybe a makeover still wouldn’t give Tesla something to worry about, but it might at least ruin part of their day.

What the Fork, Toyota?

Is there anyone out there that likes the looks of the bZ4X? If I were Toyota, I’d seriously consider these easy-to-make changes. It’s just not a bad looking car under all of that weird makeup.

I really hope that a Bees Forks isn’t in my future, but all signs on the Magic 8 Ball point to VERY LIKELY. Let’s face it- I’m not buying a used Tesla and somehow my guess is that the competitive non-Toyota EVs will have lost much of their 50-mile range advantage and maybe even be falling apart by the time I’m ready to buy one as a Kid Kar in four or five years. It’s a good bet that the bZ4X will still be running and looking like new, even you don’t want it to.

You can’t kill a Toyota, but we can kill ugly.

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