10 Best Things About the 2025 Toyota Crown Signia

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

If you want an SUV, options abound. Toyota alone sells three five-passenger crossovers, two three-row crossovers, and three traditional truck-based SUVs. 

Now, it also sells a station wagon – the all-new 2025 Toyota Crown Signia. It’s derived from the upscale Crown full-size sedan, and its gas-electric hybrid powertrain adds great gas mileage to the Crown Signia package. We just spent a week testing Toyota’s new station wagon. Here are our 10 favorite things about this comfortable, economical, upscale wagon. 

It Doesn’t Look Like an SUV

Now, we know a lot of people like SUVs. They’re the best-selling vehicles in the country, after all. But if you want a practical vehicle that doesn’t look like an SUV, the Crown Signia may be a breath of fresh air. 

Toyota calls the Crown Signia a crossover. But except for some blacked-out trim on the wheel wells and a bit of extra ground clearance, it’s not styled like an SUV. It has a long nose, gently sloped front windshield, and low, flat roof. It’s about the same length as a Toyota Highlander (194 inches) but 2 inches narrower and 4 inches lower. 

Curiously, the Crown Signia also doesn’t look like the Toyota Crown sedan. The Signia has more aggressively sculpted headlights, a simpler front bumper, and none of the sedan’s offbeat two-tone paint options. This brings the Signia closer to the design of Toyota’s acclaimed redesigns of the Prius and Camry – not the oddball Crown sedan. It’s an upscale design without looking like it’s trying to dominate other traffic. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

38 Miles per Gallon

One thing the Signia does share with the Crown sedan – as well as the latest Camry – is a hybrid powertrain. You can’t get it with a gas-only engine. Every Crown Signia has a 2.5-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine paired with two electric motors for a total of 240 horsepower. The second electric motor connects to the rear wheels to provide all-wheel drive. A continuously variable transmission (CVT) handles the engine’s power. And the electric battery gets automatically recharged by the gas engine and friction from the braking system. 

In EPA testing, the Crown Signia gets an excellent 39 mpg in the city, 37 mpg on the highway, and 38 mpg combined. That means the Crown Signia is a particularly great choice for rush-hour commutes, where stop-and-go traffic and lots of idling would burn lots of gas in a regular car – but where the Signia’s electric motors can do lots of the work. You can even select an “EV Mode” that lets you lock in a bit of extra electric-only acceleration at speeds up to about 20 mph, at least until your battery runs down. It’s enough for you to circle for a parking space or inch through the school pickup line without releasing any tailpipe emissions. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Lots of Standard Features

You won’t find a spartan version of the Crown Signia. Both of its two trim levels are luxuriously equipped. That’s not great news if you’d have preferred a lower-cost base model, but all the content justifies the $43,950 starting price.  

The base Crown Signia XLE is decked out with leather upholstery, heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a heated steering wheel, a wireless smartphone charger, a big 12.3-inch touchscreen, a hands-free power liftgate, adaptive cruise control, and blind-spot monitoring. For context, a Toyota Highlander Hybrid XLE – roomier but less opulent than the Crown Signia – costs a couple thousand dollars more with synthetic leather, no ventilated front seats, no heated rear seats or steering wheel, and a smaller screen (though it does include a moonroof). 

Or you can spring for the Limited, $47,990. It has 21-inch wheels instead of the XLE’s 19-inchers, an 11-speaker JBL stereo instead of the XLE’s six speakers, a panoramic fixed-glass roof, rain-sensing windshield wipers, the ability to use your phone as a key, and a rearview camera mirror. For another $1,865, you can add the Advanced Tech package to the Limited, like our test vehicle. Its features include a surround-view parking camera, a frontal cross-traffic alert, and rear automatic braking. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Smooth Ride

The Crown Signia rides comfortably. It’s smooth and steady on the highway, and bumps don’t slam you hard. It also shudders less than Toyota’s taller crossovers when you hit those bumps, which helps the Crown Signia feel more upscale. 

And because it’s not very tall, it enjoys a lower center of gravity – improving its handling versus an SUV. The Crown Signia isn’t a sports car, but it’s more like driving a Toyota Camry (or, of course, a Crown sedan) than driving a tall Toyota RAV4 or Highlander. In today’s SUV world, it’s easy to forget the advantages built into a lower car’s driving manners. As an AWD station wagon, the Crown Signia brings the best of both worlds. 

Just don’t expect thrills from under the hood. Unlike the Crown sedan, the Signia isn’t available with the turbocharged 340-hp Hybrid Max powertrain that lets you trade extra speed for less impressive gas mileage. In our experience, the Crown Signia has plenty of power but sounds raspy and strained if you try to use it all.

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Elegant Interior

The Crown Signia shares its interior with the Crown sedan, and that’s generally good news. The cabin is upscale without being overly “creative” with the dashboard controls. We like our test vehicle’s two-tone color scheme of Saddle Tan and black, which is available on both the XLE and Limited. The other choice, black, is a little drab for our tastes. But everything is nicely built, and you’ll find plenty of leather trim on the dash and door panels. 

As we mentioned, a 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen is standard on both trim levels. This system responds quickly to inputs, and it supports wirelessly connected Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone integration. We also appreciate how most common functions have physical buttons and knobs; you don’t need to use the screen for everything. Still, like on other Toyotas, we wish the Crown Signia made better use of its big screen. There’s space to show multiple pieces of information side by side – like GPS map directions, fuel efficiency, or radio information. Instead, you have to tap through menus to see them one at a time.

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Ample Passenger Space

The Toyota Crown is a full-size sedan, so as you’d expect, it has plenty of space inside for its five passengers. And the Crown Signia has a higher roof that gives it even more headroom. This isn’t a limo, but adults can fit comfortably into both the front and rear seats. 

We also found the front seats to be particularly well-shaped and comfortable, and we appreciated having both heating and ventilation as standard equipment. Just don’t expect the extra-high seating position of a typical SUV or crossover. If you’re pining for that, Toyota has plenty of other choices. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Room for Cargo, Plus It Can Tow

We also appreciated the Crown Signia’s cargo space. A Crown sedan has just 15 cubic feet of room in its trunk, while the Signia has 26 cubic feet behind its rear seat. Plus, you can fold its rear seat down to get 69 cubic feet of total cargo space. 

That’s not as much as a typical mid-size crossover. However, most of the loss is due to a lower roof. If you wouldn’t be packing your cargo to the ceiling, you won’t likely feel the pinch. Similarly, the Crown Signia Limited loses a cubic foot or two due to its glass roof – all coming out of that pack-to-the-ceiling metric. (If you have covered up your rear windshield with your stuff, the Limited’s rearview camera mirror will show you an unobstructed view.) The Crown Signia is also rated to tow 2,700 pounds, which isn’t huge for an SUV but is better than most compact crossovers. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Top Safety Status

The Crown Signia earned the highest rating of Good in all Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tests, which measure its crash protection, its ability to automatically brake to avoid a crash, and its headlight illumination. It just hasn’t been tested in the IIHS’s new evaluation of rear-seat safety in frontal-impact collisions, so it only earns a Top Safety Pick status instead of “Top Safety Pick+.” It also earned five out of five stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety in frontal and side-impact crash tests. 

Combine this performance with the long list of safety features we mentioned earlier, the Crown Signia is a winner for safety. 

2025 Toyota Crown Signia Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Finally, the Outback Has Competition

For years, the Subaru Outback has been the only wagon-like vehicle on the market short of a super-expensive Mercedes-Benz or Volvo. The Crown Signia changes that. 

The two wagons aren’t identical. The Toyota’s 6.7 inches of ground clearance is 2 inches less than the Subaru’s, and its all-wheel-drive system is less capable in deep snow or mud. The Outback has even more cargo room and a livelier (optional) turbocharged engine. And you can buy an Outback for under $30,000, and about $38,000 buys one equipped better than the $43,950 Crown Signia XLE. But with the Toyota you get both more luxury and better gas mileage – even as its capability, versatility, and value for the dollar remain reasonable. 

2024 Subaru Outback Touring XT ・ Photo by Brady Holt

So Does the RX 350h

We’d also weigh the Crown Signia against the country’s best-selling luxury hybrid – the Lexus RX 350h, a crossover from Toyota’s luxury division. 

The two cars have similar mechanical components, the same infotainment system (for better or for worse), and similarly roomy interiors. The Lexus has a higher seating position and the design of a sporty SUV, while the Toyota is styled like an upscale wagon. But the higher seating position and Lexus badge will cost you. The RX gets slightly worse gas mileage and drinks much costlier premium-grade fuel. Plus, it has a starting price of $51,425. 

The 2025 Toyota Crown Signia isn’t a humble station wagon. But it’s a great balance between the drivability of a good upscale sedan, the functionality of an SUV, and the fuel efficiency of a small car – when you’re willing to pay for it. 

2023 Lexus RX 350h ・ Photo by Brady Holt