The Cross Hub Concept: Yamaha's Strangest Concept Car

Automotive brands like Honda seem to always be revealing cool concept cars, whereas its competitor Ford has some concept cars you've probably never heard of. In comparison, Yamaha, doesn't dabble much in the realm of concept cars. It's released a limited number of concepts over the years, such as the Sports Ridein 2015, but that vehicle wasn't especially noteworthy. Why this is, we couldn't really say; perhaps the brand just prefers to keep things more concrete. All that said, on occasion, Yamaha does like to flex its creative muscles a bit and create something that nobody has tried yet, if for no other reason than to say it did it.

That little spark of creativity led to the creation of one of Yamaha's most distinctive concept cars, the Cross Hub, originally debuted at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show in 2017. The Cross Hub is one of those concept cars that, upon looking at it, you immediately wonder what the heck it's supposed to be, as it features a bizarre shape and design that you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. In actuality, though, the Cross Hub's design is a clever little bit of cross-vehicular ingenuity, intended to work in tandem with Yamaha's major moneymaker, motorcycles.

According to Yamaha's concept documentation on the Cross Hub Concept, the intent of the vehicle was to create something that could serve as an interconnecting point to various forms of fun and activity, or a "hub" if you will. In other words, it's a car that can handle all kinds of terrain and driving styles as well as transport smaller vehicles for spots it can't manage on its own.

At a glance, the Cross Hub kind of looks like a stubby pickup truck. The designers wanted it to be just big enough to comfortably haul up to four people, while still being small enough to traverse urban and rural roads, as well as go off-road. This missive led to the creation of the Cross Hub's distinctive diamond-shaped layout, with the driver riding solo up front, two seats behind them, and a fourth in the rear. This creates enough space for everyone to fit, while still leaving enough space for the rear bed. Speaking of, the rear bed is just large enough to safely haul up to two sporty motorcycles.

During the Cross Hub's first and so far only appearance at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show, the focus was exclusively on design sensibilities, with no details on potential power options shared. It was just a concept vehicle, after all, and if Yamaha ever plans on bringing it to life, those plans hadn't been revealed at the time of this writing.