Today is a momentous occasion. Exactly half a century ago, on Halloween Day, an upstart Japanese company set up shop in Hollywood, California with the intent of selling cars in the US. A task of such ambition had never been attempted before, and it showed. The first passenger car, the 1958 Toyopet Crown, had a 1.5L engine, 60hp, and the motivation of a crippled tortoise. 0-60 took almost half a minute.
With a fashionable chrome grille reminiscent of Mr. Pringle’s mustache stretching the width, a Jet Age hood ornament on the prow, and nifty suicide doors on each side, it was the perfect car for a slow, stylish cruise around the narrow, then-bumpy streets of Tokyo where speed was not an issue. On America’s yawning interstates, however, ill did not even begin to describe its equippedness. Not that domestic land yachts at the time were speed demons either, but the Toyopet practically moved backward in comparison, and the lines were downright staid compared to the wildly tailfinned chrome-mobiles.
It had a speedometer needle that changed colors as its velocity increased, but to give you an idea of the Crown’s intended operating range, it started out as a soothing green. Accelerate past 30 and it turned a somewhat troubling yellow. Push it above 50, and the needle would glow a panic-inducing red. To find out why their top-of-the-line machine in Japan had such pitiful sales on this side of the Pacific, Shoichiro Toyoda himself came to the US and took one for a drive on American roads, only to discover, much to his dismay, that he couldn’t even safely merge onto the highway. The Crown overheated when climbing LA’s hilly roads and the company decided to revamp its US operations.
But therein lies the secret to Toyota’s success. It quickly got to the root of the problem and corrected it. Surviving only on the sales of the Land Cruiser and the introduction of the Crown wagon, they eked by until 1965 and the debut of the Corona, which had been designed specifically for American tastes and driving habits. Although the 1960 Crown was officially a Toyota already, it was still marketed as the Toyopet. The Toyota Corona was the dawn of a new era for the company, and the name was its new flag. Good thing, too, since few would probably take the Toyopet Tundra or Toyopet Supra seriously. Following that, the Corolla appeared in 1968 and the rest is history. Soon, Toyota surpassed the best selling import brand, VW, and the Corolla eventually became the top selling car in the world.
So not only do we celebrate 50 years of Toyota in the US today, but it’s also 50 years of Japanese cars in the US, period. In addition, 2007 is also the 70th anniversary of the company in Japan, when it officially spun off (ha!) from Toyoda Automatic Loom, and Toyota is currently in a neck-and-neck race with GM for top selling brand in the world. You’ve come a long way, Toyota. Here’s to many more.
We are headed to Sin City for three gigantic convention halls full of cars, cars, cars. From lowriders to towering 4×4s, it’s the trade show that has it all. Well, except for a strong presence of vintage Japanese. There’s usually a few token vehicles but hopefully that will change, soon. We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out our old SEMA galleries here and here.
Move over, Governator, there’s a new force out of Austria to be reckoned with, and that force is Japan-Oldies.at. Like the name says, it’s a German-language forum for lovers of old Japanese cars, and it’s run by Rainer, aka Mr_Daihatsu on our forum. Check out his moving quest for a painstakingly restored 1981 G10 Daihatsu Charade that, if the Gumball Rally sticker in the original ebay photo is any indication, has led a very difficult life.
Look out world, vintage Japanese car fans are coming together like Go-Bots! And in case you haven’t already, check out grandJDM from Australia (note to pageant queens: there’s an L and some extra vowels in there) and Old Japanese Car from the UK.
There’s a new magazine in town, if your town happens to be in Japan. It’s called Street Van & Wagon, and we know painfully little about it. We can see that it’s about longbacked cars from the 60s - 80s, and in case you forgot, there’s a defiant reminder that “We still live in this world!” It’s no secret that we love wagons here at JNC, and the clean custom Toyota Crown and Nissan Skyline on the cover promise what we can only imagine are pages full of sizzling hot wagon action on the inside. We want this mag, now!
Unless you’ve spent the last two years being probed in an alien mothership, you know of the triumphant return of Nissan’s GT-R, which (finally!) debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show this week. But at the recent Motorsport Japan 2007 festival, Nissan unveiled another GT-R, sure to be of more interest to you nostalgic fans - their very own KPGC10 GT-R, which just underwent a thorough restoration. Check it out, in all its original splendor, complete with high ride height and blacked out wheels. It was all part of the ongoing party honoring the 50th anniversary of the Skyline.
Held in Odaiba, Tokyo, Motorsport Japan is a celebration of racing, with live runs of everything from Toyota’s own replica of the yellow and green 2000GT that broke 16 world speed records on a 72hr endurance run in 1966, to modern F1 cars like the planet Earth-schemed Hondas. Other notable classic race cars included the massively-winged Nissan R381 and turbocharged Toyota 7.
So instead, we’ll just show you the Suzuki LC from the 2005 ToMoShow, a retro concept that hearkens back to the company’s first car, the 1955 Suzulight. Check out the stubby bullet fender mirrors, the plaid-on-red upholstery and the whitewall tires, all in a package cute enough to be a Sanrio character. Sadly, it never made it into production, but we want to love it and pet it and call it George.
BRE stands for Brock Racing Enterprises, which is Pete Brock’s race shop that dominated all the classes of US racing that it competed, from the late 60s until 1974 when it was disbanded. BRE was also a contracted racing team to Datsun and hence the BRE cars are some of the most significant Datsun/Nissan race cars ever to grace a racetrack.
Enthusiasts of 60s iron will recognise Pete Brock (no relation to Australian racing icon Peter Brock) as the designer of the Shelby Cobra Daytona. At the time, Pete worked for Carrol Shelby, who was having a lot of racing success with the Cobra. Having an enormous power to weight ratio, the Cobras were always quick, but the vintage lines of the AC Ace based body were a serious aerodynamic liability at super high racing speeds. Not only was it high in drag, but it suffered from tremendous front end lift. So Pete designed a sleek, windcheating body to clothe the musclebound Cobra, and it worked too, winning its class at Le Mans in 1964.
Pete Brock would part ways with Carrol Shelby in the late 60s however, to start his own racing shop, BRE. And thus starting a decade-long dominance of amateur racing by Datsun in the USA.
Today is a momentous occasion. Exactly half a century ago, on Halloween Day, an upstart Japanese company set up shop in Hollywood, California with the intent of selling cars in the US. A task of such ambition had never been attempted before, and it showed. The first passenger car, the 1958 Toyopet Crown, had a 1.5L engine, 60hp, and the motivation of a crippled tortoise. 0-60 took almost half a minute.
But therein lies the secret to Toyota’s success. It quickly got to the root of the problem and corrected it. Surviving only on the sales of the Land Cruiser and the introduction of the Crown wagon, they eked by until 1965 and the debut of the Corona, which had been designed specifically for American tastes and driving habits. Although the 1960 Crown was officially a Toyota already, it was still marketed as the Toyopet. The Toyota Corona was the dawn of a new era for the company, and the name was its new flag. Good thing, too, since few would probably take the Toyopet Tundra or Toyopet Supra seriously. Following that, the Corolla appeared in 1968 and the rest is history. Soon, Toyota surpassed the best selling import brand, VW, and the Corolla eventually became the top selling car in the world.
We are headed to Sin City for three gigantic convention halls full of cars, cars, cars. From lowriders to towering 4×4s, it’s the trade show that has it all. Well, except for a strong presence of vintage Japanese. There’s usually a few token vehicles but hopefully that will change, soon. We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out our old SEMA galleries 
There’s a new magazine in town, if your town happens to be in Japan. It’s called Street Van & Wagon, and we know painfully little about it. We can see that it’s about longbacked cars from the 60s - 80s, and in case you forgot, there’s a defiant reminder that “We still live in this world!” It’s no secret that we love 
Unless you’ve spent the last two years being probed in an alien mothership, you know of the triumphant return of 
As the unveils at the Tokyo Motor Show enters its second day, the dearth of nostalgics and any reference to them continues. We’ve seen cars that are 
