For the car enthusiast children of the ‘90s and early ‘00s, there is perhaps no more beloved or important Japanese automobile than the white, green, and red number 36 Toyota Castrol TOM’S Supra, which brought Toyota its first-ever All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGTC) title in 1997. Just as importantly, though, the Castrol TOM’S Supra became the unofficial poster car for the wildly popular “Gran Turismo” racing game series, introducing the legend of TOM’S and Toyota performance to a generation of fans outside Japan. This legendary racer isn’t where tuning company TOM’S began its storied racing partnership with Toyota, however, and for its latest Edifice release, Casio pays tribute to a full 50 years of TOM’S-engineered Toyota racing machines. The new Casio Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition blends a racy, modernist skeletonized carbon case with a solid list of features, along with a bevy of impressively integrated visual tributes to several of the cars that have made this five-decade racing partnership so legendary.

The first impression that the Casio Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition gives on the wrist is extreme lightness. In true Casio fashion, it’s not exactly small at 44.5mm wide and 13.3mm thick, but the skeletonized carbon fiber-reinforced resin “Sospensione” case is so lightweight it barely registers during wear. The brand claims an overall mass of just 56 grams, in fact. With that said, there’s still a solid amount of wrist presence here, thanks primarily to the long, wide skeletonized lug structures. Although this open-wheel suspension-inspired lattice design does mitigate the perceived visual weight somewhat, there’s no getting around the substantial 50.1mm lug-to-lug length. With its prominent strap end links, the perceived length on the wrist is even greater, and the downturned shape’s wraparound effect and the slimming power of black can’t completely overcome this sense of scale. However, the case is impressively complex and detailed for this price point, blending the cutaway matte black forms of the main case body with a brushed, polished, and black-coated 60-minute bezel in stainless steel. Equally impressive is the anti-reflective sapphire crystal, which features a ghostly printed “36” at the 36-minute mark in tribute to the JGTC championship-winning Castrol TOM’S Supra. Around back, the watch features an etched, screw-fastened caseback featuring the TOM’S logo, which enables a reasonably sporting 100 meters of water resistance.

While it may seem like a colorful, albeit broadly conventional modern racing chronograph design at first glance, nearly every component of the Casio Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition is a direct visual tribute to the racing history of TOM’S. As an example, the translucent subdials at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock feature a skeleton layer lifted directly from the four-bolt Igeta wheels used on the original TOM’S KP47 Starlet, while the colorful ring between the outer chapter ring and the woven carbon fiber main dial surface pays tribute to that car’s white, red, and green racing livery. Meanwhile, the honeycomb structure surrounding the 3 o’clock date window echoes the grille pattern of that same KP47 Starlet, with a lavender background referencing that car’s unique purple valve cover. Added together, all these visual tributes form a fun, racy, and refreshingly non-literal automotive-inspired design, but it’s not without its faults. For instance, the vivid orange-and-yellow central seconds hand is a running seconds, leaving the more detail-dependent chronograph seconds display to a low-contrast gray-on-gray subdial at 6 o’clock to supplement the red-rimmed 9 o’clock chronograph minutes. This layout also only allows for chronograph timing in one-second intervals, a severely limiting factor for tracking a motorsport where tenths or even hundredths of a second are often critical.

Casio powers the Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition with its in-house Module 5530 solar-powered quartz split-seconds chronograph movement. Small-interval timing deficiencies notwithstanding, the Module 5530 is a solidly capable performer, offering an accuracy of +20/-20 seconds per month and a power reserve of 5 months on a full solar charge. To complete the package, Casio fits the watch with a unique asymmetrical strap in black leather. Like the case and dial, this strap design is brimming with TOM’S racing tributes both obvious and subtle. There’s no missing the embroidered green and yellow TOM’S racing patch on the 6 o’clock side, but the painted forest green strap edges also pay homage to one of the team’s most enduring racing colors. Even both of the strap keepers are directly inspired by the TOM’S KP47 Starlet — the leather one naturally sporting the white, green, and red racing color scheme, and the black stainless steel keeper takes both its tapering silhouette and its circular cutouts from the lightweight wing mirrors used on that car. Sporty visual nods aside, it’s a solidly plush and flexible strap option right out of the gate, making the ultra-light case even more comfortable during wear.

Among fans of Toyota, Japanese motorsports, or the “Gran Turismo” racing game franchise, few names elicit the same sort of reverence and excitement as TOM’S. The new Casio Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition brings this 50-year racing legacy to the wrist with a surprisingly complex visual tribute, tying in a wide variety of race-car cues alongside a sporty, modernist skeleton chronograph design. Although the brand makes no mention of a limited production run, it’s easy to assume the Casio Edifice TOM’S 50th Anniversary Edition will be a limited-time offering, and the watch is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this watch stands at $300 USD as of press time. For more information, please visit the brand’s website.