He’re a peculiar public service announcement from the Danish government. Apparently, it’s a message about seat belt safety, in which an extremely skilled stunt-driver set world record for two-wheeled driving in an AE86 Corolla only to endure a dark, M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist at the end.
Toyota celebrates many milestones this year, including their 50th year of sales in the US and their 50th year in motorsports. But perhaps the most significant one of all, not just to Toyota but the entire automotive industry, is the 30th anniversary of the English publication of the Toyota Production System, or TPS.
Also known as Lean Production or Just-in-Time Production, TPS is very difficult to explain in a short blog entry, but the basic idea is to have all your inventory, parts, assembly line, workers, and machines synced in complete harmony, like a giant choreographed orchestra that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The deli in the Visa Check Card commercial above can probably better illustrate it than any words.
It also gave factory floor workers an individual voice for the very first time in history. Whereas in US plants, workers were under the gun of productivity and only foremen were allowed to stop production, Toyota management routinely asked linemen for suggestions and gave them the power to pull the entire line to a halt if a defect was noticed.
According to the book The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, the leap from Henry Ford’s assembly line to TPS was as significant as the leap from having one craftsman build an entire car to Ford’s assembly line, where each man specialized in one part. The industry’s Journal of Production Research calls it “one of the most significant industrial innovations of the 20th century.”
TPS gave Toyota a fighting chance despite having only a fraction of the resources of GM or Ford, and was eventually adopted by not only all of the auto industry, but all industries. The full name of the revolutionary paper is “Toyota Production System and Kanban System: Materialization of Just-in-Time and Respect-for-Human System” by Y. Sugimori, K. Kusunoki, F. Cho, S. Uchikawa.
Source: [ReliablePlant.com; The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos]
Here’s an interesting site, the Car CM Database. There, you can see screenshots of your favorite cars, both old and new, starring in their own Japanese TV commercials. From wacky non sequiturs and nutty taglines to cameos by Western actors that never thought their million dollar paychecks would migrate to this side of the Pacific, this site has it all. Commercials are sorted by manufacturer and model, and are not limited to Japanese marques.
When we were kids, we’d scuff up furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and anything else our parents valued with hundreds of little metal cars. Of course, in the US that meant Matchbox or Hot Wheels, and for a brief while, Pocket Cars. Of course, Pocket Cars was the American market name for Tomica, a Japanese line of diecast cars that, unlike their 1:1 scale counterparts, had a very little success in the US, due mainly to their higher cost and lack of recognizable models (to American eyes, at least).
In Japan, however, Tomicas thrived and in 2004, parent company Tomy launched a new lineup called Tomica Limited Vintage, a line of highly detailed cars based on nostalgics! Cars range from Prince Skylines to Mazda K360 three-wheelers to Toyota Crowns. Prices start at ¥790 for a small car like Subaru 360 Wagon and cap out at ¥3000 for a Hino RB10 Bus. All models are 1/64 scale.
Oh jeez. If there’s one reason I can think of for me to learn Japanese, it’s so I can read all these amazing looking manga comics. I mentioned Garage Restore 251 not long ago, and Auto Otaku has put together a list of other relevant manga titles. We need to get a planet-wide common language, stat! In the meantime, I guess I’m just gonna have to drool over the few shots shown here.
Who knows what Toyotas lurk in the hearts of barns? The Toyotageek knows!
The world is big. Cars are small. You just never know what’s out there, waiting for a Nostalgia Jones to unearth it, and with a length of less than 12 feet and a width under 5, the Toyota Sports 800 occupies, well, a very small portion of the Earth’s 52 million square miles of land. And according to Toyotageek.com’s estimates, only about half of the 3,100 cars built remain, adding even more hay to the stack.
Based on the Toyota Publica platform, the Sports 800 matches an air-cooled 45hp two-cylinder to a helium-esque 1278 pounds, giving the two-seater a top speed of 90mph. Produced from 1965 to 1969, and initially called the Publica Sports, these tiny targa terrors were Toyota’s first sports car and were frequently raced in Japan.
Friends of Toyotageek discovered the proverbial barn find in California (where else?) a while back, but (spoiler alert) sadly, the contact was fleeting.
This is a strange one. It’s not all that uncommon to see cross-manufacturer engine swaps, with there being a number of 2JZ/1JZ powered S30s out there, but nonetheless; this F20C-powered TA22 Celica is on the list of unexpected swaps! I can’t fault the guy’s dedication though, that is one thoroughly well planned and executed engine swap and overall restoration. Thumbs up from grandJDM!
Oh man! When I decided earlier in the year that I wanted to return to full-time study, there was one part of being a student that had somehow slipped my mind—homework! Urgh. So therein lies the reason and the apology for the lack of updates lately.
Moving on!
RB and SR powered Datsuns aren’t uncommon by any stretch of the imagination, but old Hondas with new motors—that’s something you don’t see as often. I wonder why that is? Perhaps there’s just not as much community support for these projects, so nobody wants to take the risk of being the first one to do it, and having no large knowledge-base to turn to when it all goes south.
Heading towards Laguna Seca for the Monterey Historics, you get to share the highway with some pretty choice machinery. An aggressively-driven Aston Martin DB9 came up fast from behind, but moments later this green 510 absolutely ripped past everyone and disappeared into the horizon.
Next up, a pair of resto-modded nostalgics in the form of a 240Z (hmm, is that taillight cluster a Ferrari or Skyline tribute?) and an ‘81 Corolla liftback. Below that, survivior second-gen stockers: Celica and Accord.
Here’s an interesting site, the 
When we were kids, we’d scuff up furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and anything else our parents valued with hundreds of little metal cars. Of course, in the US that meant Matchbox or Hot Wheels, and for a brief while, Pocket Cars. Of course, Pocket Cars was the American market name for Tomica, a Japanese line of diecast cars that, unlike their 1:1 scale counterparts, had a very little success in the US, due mainly to their higher cost and lack of recognizable models (to American eyes, at least).
Who knows what Toyotas lurk in the hearts of barns? The 
Oh man! When I decided earlier in the year that I wanted to return to full-time study, there was one part of being a student that had somehow slipped my mind—homework! Urgh. So therein lies the reason and the apology for the lack of updates lately.
Heading towards Laguna Seca for the 
