Japanese Nostalgic Car

Ratrodding is a genre of the hotrod scene, where the cars in question are usually made to look unfinished and rusty, with peeling paint and undercoat showing through. Most of the time, the cars favoured are old Hudsons, Roadsters, and so forth. You know what I’m talkin’ about; the usual hotrod.

So when Scott from The Drift Scene linked me to this ratted up Toyota Corona Wagon… my jaw hit the floor. Is this not the most unreal lookin’ thing you’ve seen lately? Come on.

I haven’t been able to find any info about the car, but some of the guys on the Toyota3TC forum mentioned that it’s packing around 300hp (looks like there’s a 2JZ or 1JZ in there), and that the owner is known for these sorts of projects. Hopefully he or she will come forward!

Today, Shoichiro Toyoda spoke at the Woodrow Wilson Center International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. This is right in our backyard, so we made the haul down to Das Capital to see what the son of Toyota Motor Corporation founder Kiichiro Toyoda had to say.

Much of the speech centered on the Toyota Production System, the company’s US plants, and US-Japan relations. We’ll spare you the details. An interesting anecdote emerged, however. In 1957, Toyota debuted the Toyopet Crown in the US, where it completely failed to impress the car-buying public. Curious, Dr. Toyoda took two Crowns for a drive on American roads. The power-to-weight ratio was so horrid, he couldn’t even merge safely onto the highway if the on-ramp sloped uphill. The future Honorary Chairman of one of the biggest auto manufacturers on Earth was forced to drive around until he found a downhill ramp. True to the TPS, he returned to Japan with his research, and eventually gave us the modern ‘Yotas that can get up inclines with no problemo.

[Image courtesy of iccic.or.jp]

Last week we told you about Toyota USA’s very own blog. Well on that blog, as part of their countdown to the 50th anniversary celebration on October 31, a retrospective of significant Toyotas will be highlighted, the first of which is the 2000GT. We’ve cast many words into the electronic ether over this amazing automobile in the past, so we’ll let Open Road take the helm.

Of course, the one thing you will never hear us mention in any article about the 2000GT is its minor role in a laughably ridiculous series of movies about some British chap with a pistol. We understand that the unwashed may need the pop culture reference to orient themselves, but we think the car stands just fine on its own. Let’s just say that a current viewing of the film – which features both a bald, gray-suited, parody-ripe villain who builds a spaceship to usher in WWIII and a plastic surgery operation that turns Indiana Jones’s father into a Vulcan – proves it does not stand up to the test of time nearly as well as the machine itself.

[Source: Toyota Open Road Blog]