This will be the last week you’ll ever get to visit Toyota’s sprawling MegaWeb gallery in Tokyo. It will close for good on December 31, 2021, after 22 years. That includes not only the main showroom of new cars, but the enthusiast-oriented History Garage located in the adjacent Venus Fort mall. Ironically, Toyota released what is probably the most in-depth video of the History Garage earlier this year.
The nearly 13-minute video acts sort of like a tourism promotion video. It’s in Japanese, but if you turn on subtitles you can read along in English. It begins in the 1960s recreation of Miyuki-dori in the Ginza section of Tokyo, considered to be ground zero for fashion trends back in that era.
Even though we’ve been to MegaWeb many times, the video points out things we never noticed, like the screen depicting popular Japanese clothing styles of the 60s and 70s (guess we were too busy looking at the cars). The guide also points out some of the easter eggs hidden in the street scene, like in the tin-plate Oronine ad.
After that, we see the Restore Pit where cars like Toyota’s 510 Bluebird Coupé were brought back to life, and then the adjacent café and Motorsports Heritage Zone. Closeups follow of cars like the Fiat 500, Toyota Crown hardtop coupe, ST185 Celica WRC car, TE27 Trueno and AE86 Levin.
It seems strange that Toyota would produce a video like this, especially since MegaWeb was mostly closed due to the pandemic between the time the video was made and the time when the facility will shut its doors forever. Perhaps it was meant as a virtual tour to get people through quarantine, or maybe MegaWeb staff themselves didn’t know the decision to close would come just two weeks after the video’s publication. Or, perhaps, it was done for the same reason we at JNC do a lot of what we do. For archival purposes. Come January 1, videos like this will be the only way to see MegaWeb.
On our visit to Japan in 2018 we spent almost a full day at the MegaWeb. It was definitely as interesting and exciting as the Toyota Museum in Nagakute.
As owners of a 1997 Toyota Century V12, one of the highlights was seeing the new
Century Hybrid which was on display. The car is even more impressive in the flesh than seeing it on pictures.The display of all kinds of Vans was exciting too.
We will miss the MegaWeb and have to find something similar Automobile related when we travel to Japan next time, hopefully in October 2022.
If Japan will allow gaijin in by then !
Well maybe Toyota should do what Mitsubishi did when they closed their UK museum…
Auction of the cars that are in it!!!
FYI…..Toyota still had a museum near their HQ so that’s not gonna happened
I’ve always wondered how much different Toyota’s image in the US would be if they had sold the TE27 here.
Thanks for bringing this to us.
Sucks to hear of this closing is happening. Fortunate to check it out a couple years back.
It was really cool to checkout, but I like the whole Venus Fort area and Odaiba in general.
Lot of great memories at MegaWeb. Favorite is the 50th anniversary gathering of Toyota Sports 800s I captured for JNC back in 2015.
Good times… *sniff*…