What Does Toyota's 'C-HR' Stand For?

Sold in the U.S. between the 2018 and 2022 model years, the Toyota CH-R is a compact urban crossover SUV that was designed to appeal to consumers who wanted a city runabout with a muscular, edgy design. It was based on the Toyota TNGA-C platform used by the likes of the fourth and current-generation Toyota Prius, twelfth-generation Corolla, and Lexus UX. Unlike those models, the Toyota CH-R was an oddity that never caught on with the American public despite being one of the most reliable Toyota models ever built.

That's due partially to its unusual and polarizing design, which fuses coupe, hatchback, and crossover styling cues into one. While trendy and very interesting to look at, it departed too much from the conventional Toyota crossover styling that consumers had gotten used to. Some also felt that the CH-R greatly sacrificed practicality in the name of fashion, with owners getting a meager 19.1 cubic feet of room behind the rear seats and 37 cubic feet behind the front row.

It also had a severely underpowered 144-hp 2.0-liter 3ZR-FAE naturally aspirated engine, which often struggled to make city driving exciting. In Car and Driver performance testing, the CH-R took a painfully slow 11.0 seconds to reach 60 mph. Consumer choices were limited to the languid four-cylinder engine, front-wheel drive, and a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT). With the market not very receptive to the model, Toyota discontinued the C-HR following the 2022 model year. 

Despite its five-year production cycle, many never realized what CH-R actually stood for. On its support page, Toyota stated that the CH-R acronym stands for Coupe High Rider. The Japanese automaker did not provide further details on how it arrived at that name, but looking at the design, it becomes pretty apparent. 

The coupe designation likely points to the coupe styling of the crossover, as highlighted by the sloping roofline and rear three-quarter. The high rider aspect, meanwhile, alludes to the Toyota CH-R's higher ground clearance and elevated driving position compared to standard cars like the Toyota Corolla, for example. Despite being built off the same TNGA-C platform as the current-generation Toyota Corolla, the Toyota CH-R rides higher, with its minimum ground clearance coming in at 5.9 inches. The current Toyota Corolla generation, by comparison, has a minimum ground clearance of 5.3 inches, which makes it about 0.6 inches lower than the CH-R.