Calty Design Research

About Calty Design Research

Calty Design Research Incorporated (also simply known as Calty) is a Toyota design studio established in 1973. They have two facilities: one in Newport Beach, California for concept designs, and another in Ann Arbor, Michigan for production designs. Calty provides both interior and exterior styling proposals for future Toyota vehicles and advanced design, production color and wheel design concepts for Toyota's product development operations. Calty was initially created by Noritsuna Watanabe and David Stollery in 1973 at El Segundo, California. In 1976, Toyota sent Kazuo Morohoshi to rebuild the design center into a much stronger entity. Morohoshi was an assistant manager in Toyota who had recent completed work on the third generation Corolla and the Tercel and Corsa. His task was to build a long term design center in America to cater for American tastes and styles rather than catering to Japanese tastes and styles. Morohoshi had to develop both the direction for the new center and physical realities such as selecting the building, fitting it out and hiring staff.