Toyota 2000

There have been cars built in Japan for quite a long time, but the Japanese automotive industry as we know it today is a much more recent phenomenon. Prior to WWII, the cars built in Japan were mainly foreign companies setting up local manufacturing operations. Japanese companies really tackled new cars themselves after the war, but for a long time, they were only building cheap economy cars, and most of the designs were copies of older cars from foreign manufactures. Sports cars were tiny things with engines under 1 liter and were produced in very small quantities.

All of this historical context is important because it helps to show just how big of a revolutionary moment it was in 1965 when Toyota first showed the 2000GT at the Tokyo Motor Show. The car actually started out as a partnership between Nissan and Yamaha, but when Nissan decided to pass on the Yamaha design, it was just taken over to Toyota. Even among Japanese manufacturers at the time, Toyota was a pretty conservative company. But the company brass recognized the 2000GT as an opportunity to shake up its image, and maybe even change the way that people outside of Japan looked at Japanese cars in general.

Continue reading to learn more about the 1967 Toyota 2000GT.