My Cheap Japanese Taxi Was The Victim Of A Hit-And-Run At Monterey Car Week, Then Somehow Ended Up Winning A Prize Alongside Priceless Ferraris And Lamborghinis

Our universe is a strange and mysterious place. Sometimes it giveth. Sometimes it taketh. And sometimes it does those things in equal measure, but not necessarily in that order.

I brought a Japanese taxi to Monterey Car Week this year. The car is a 1997 Toyota Crown Royal Saloon I imported from Japan a few years ago for a very reasonable, four-figure price. It hadn’t actually been a taxi in Japan; in its former life, the car had been owned by the elderly patriarch of a wealthy family in Gifu Prefecture, where it had been chauffeur-driven and immaculately maintained.

Nevertheless, it was a taxi-spec car. It’s got a silky-smooth, 2.5-liter 1JZ-GE inline-six, big fender mirrors that look like giraffe antlers, power reclining rear seats, and a spotless set of OEM lace seat cover doilies embossed with the Crown logo. The doors close with a stately thud.

Unlike the more plentiful Toyota Crown Comforts that still roam the streets of Japan, Crown Royal Saloons weren’t used as regular taxicabs; instead, the Royal Saloon was typically a luxury hired car. Think: black car, like a Lincoln Town Car or Cadillac Escalade, but Japanese, and quite a bit more refined.

If you were the mayor of a midsize Japanese city during the 1990s, a Crown Royal Saloon (with a driver) was how you got around town. If you were a mid-level VP at a big Japanese company, a Royal Saloon is how you got to work. And if you were an American executive visiting Japan for business, a Crown Royal Saloon is probably the car that met you at Haneda Airport for the ride to your hotel.

I’m a Japan nerd. I visit Japan regularly, and I’ve always wanted a Japanese taxi because they’re just so iconically Japanese. So I turned this Crown into a Japanese taxi tribute by adding a made-up livery to the sides, a rooftop taxi lantern, credit card decals on the windows of the rear doors, and a forward-facing LED status sign that shines through the windshield.

Inside the car, passengers can enjoy an assortment of fresh newspapers from Japan in the seat pocket, a 2026 promotional calendar from a Kumamoto taxi company hanging on the dashboard, and an indescribable but pleasantly evocative scent that can only be described as “automotive interior in Japan.”

In its Japanese taxi costume, the Crown is elegant, authentic, and delightful, and it makes people smile wherever it goes. Best of all, though, because this car was so aggressively maintained in Japan, it’s also immaculate and completely minty.

Or at least it was, until I brought it to Car Week.

Driving a Japanese taxi during Car Week is a sensible choice. Apart from being five-star comfortable and whisper-quiet, the Crown’s automatic transmission makes sitting in traffic easy — and sitting in traffic is something you do a lot of at Car Week.

The taxi livery sparks lots of delight among the younger folks lining the streets with their cameras, but the car also has a secret superpower: it excels at infiltrating posh parties and events. In a Japanese taxi, I can get close to the front door of almost any Car Week spectacle. I just say, “I’m here to pick somebody up!” or “I need to drop them off [while pointing to friends in the back seat]!” Security guards wave me by. Traffic cones separate like Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea. A Bugatti can’t pull off this level of social engineering across the full spectrum of Car Week activities as reliably, but a Japanese taxi totally can. It’s the vehicular equivalent of driving an all-access wristband. Handy!

Anyway, after using the taxi disguise to gain access to 17 Mile Road and the Gooding Christie’s Auction preview, I drove the Crown to go explore the Little Car Show in downtown Pacific Grove. I street-parked (totally legally!) on a side street near the show, then wandered around for a while to check out all the tiny cars.

When I returned 10 minutes later, I noticed a very large, very new dent on the left rear quarter panel of the Crown, just behind the passenger door. Eeek!

Shock! Horror! Despair! The forensics were obvious: someone in a white vehicle, probably an SUV, had backed into my car from across the street, perhaps while trying to turn around. And after bespoiling my minty Toyota Crown taxi, they just… drove away. No note, no apologies, no witnesses, no other clues.

These kinds of experiences don’t inspire an abiding faith in the innate goodness of our species. Yeah, stuff happens, but I didn’t enjoy the hot flashes of sadness and fury that washed over me in those first few minutes after realizing that this pristine Toyota Crown taxi will never be quite as pristine again.

Beyond my existential torments, the other bit of bad news was that damage to the rear quarter of a car is almost always… very bad. Unlike a front fender or doors, the area around the rear wheels isn’t some removable panel that can easily be replaced and swapped out. Instead, in the rear quarter of the body is integrated into the vehicle’s unibody shell, so fixing it requires real auto body skill and a whole lot of very careful repainting.

The good news? While the surface area of the dent is large, it wasn’t super-deep. Also, the rear door got scuffed, but it wasn’t actually bent. Likewise, (Inshallah) neither the rear wheel arch trim nor the nearby gas cap lid were damaged. It seemed fixable, with no replacement parts required.

I drove back to my overpriced motor lodge, popped open a canned cocktail, and then another, and then one more, and launched my spiritual journey toward inner calm and emotional acceptance.

Two days later, I was still feeling the grief, but the pain had subsided. A generous friend had given me a free ticket to The Quail, the self-identified “Motorsports Gathering” that takes place on the fairways and greens of a fancy golf course amid many fancy outfits, Italian supercars, high-value classics, and a gluttonous supply of complimentary food and drink. Tickets to the Quail go for about $1600 retail, and this year they sold out almost immediately, so tickets were fetching $2500 and up in secondary markets. So fancy.

I parked the Crown on a remote lawn outside The Quail, entered the main event, checked out some supercars, and began gorging myself on local oysters, Shanghai dim sum, and fruity cocktails.

Sometime around noon, I got a notification that the Crown had won an award. I’d left a card on the dashboard to register it in The Quail’s annual parking lot concours, and miraculously my humble Crown taxi had WON! It’d been selected for the parking lot prize — big dent and all.

The rest is kind of a blur. With my friend and co-conspirator Rich Chen cosplaying as a Japanese cabbie, I rode in the back seat of the car waving imperially as we were ushered toward The Quail’s inner sanctum.

A few minutes later, we were instructed to drive onto the main stage, where former Top Gear host Chris Harris and Peninsula Hotels scion Philip Kadoori presented me with a lovely glass trophy and a big (empty!) bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. We’d been awarded the “Car Park Concours de Quailegance,” which may be the closest The Quail ever really gets to weird car irony.

Chris Harris said the dent gave the Crown an extra air of authenticity; a kind of street-savvy taxi patina. Meanwhile, as my name flashed on the big screen behind the stage, I heard an announcer with a highbrow British accent deadpan over the PA, “There are many valuable trophies that will be presented today, and this is not one of them.” Lol.

He wasn’t wrong, of course. But likewise, I’m not particularly proud, so winning a concours at The Quail in a 1997 Toyota Crown taxi (with a big dent on the left side!) alongside such other 2026 winners as a Ferrari F40, a Lamborghini Diablo, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL, and a 1968 Toyota 2000GT felt… pretty good!

Even better, it helped redeem all the sadness and disappointment of the hit-and-run trauma of a few days before.

The dent is repairable. That wrong can be righted. The damage will eventually disappear, and the car will be made whole again. But now this staid Toyota Crown in a Japanese taxi costume is a certified Quail concours winner, and that’s the kind of glory that never, ever fades.

All photos by the author