{"id":551597,"date":"2026-07-30T17:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/551597\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T17:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:10:23","slug":"toyota-lost-money-on-every-single-unit-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/551597\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Toyota Lost Money On Every Single Unit Sold’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lineage of Toyota<\/a> sports cars did not begin with a slow, gradual climb through the ranks to fight the good fight against storied nameplates in the business. It started with the small, largely unknown Sports 800<\/a> in 1965\u2014a little kei-car-sized two-seater that nobody outside Japan knew about at the time.<\/p>\n

Toyota decided the next step would be to start at the top and work its way down. The company developed one of the most important sports cars in Japan\u2019s rapidly growing automobile industry: the 2000GT. Over half a century later, the legendary model is still a powerful force behind each GR model, and the TRD models before that. <\/p>\n

Toyota\u2019s First Shot At Living Twice<\/p>\n

\"Toyota
\n Toyota 2000GT Roadster Top Down White Front Angled ViewToyota<\/p>\n

Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman Akio Toyoda wasn\u2019t the first in his family to push for less boring cars<\/a> in the lineup. In fact, a similar conversation occurred in the early 1960s when Toyota was facing quality concerns in the United States. The small Toyota Toyopet Crown\u2014the first model from the automaker to reach the US in 1958\u2014wasn\u2019t holding up over long distances or traveling at US highway speeds. Fixing these issues wouldn\u2019t be enough in the eyes of Toyota\u2019s board, so it got to work thinking of new ways to reshape what its name meant.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Yamaha was taking bids for its sports car it was looking to co-develop with another manufacturer after Nissan<\/a> first rejected the idea<\/a>. Toyota didn\u2019t take Yamaha up on the first offer, but it knew the company might be the key to developing a sports car of its own. A newly formed division of Yamaha created to design and test high-performance sports cars had its first client, and the result was pure gold.<\/p>\n

Close\"lotuslotus elan front yellow on a trackLotus\"1971The Jaguar E-Type, described by Enzo Ferrari as the most beautiful car in the world, became the apple of Jaguar’s eye in 1961, leaving the Daimler SP250 out in the cold.Jaguar\"Porsche-911_2.0_Coupe-1964-Exterior\"1964 Porsche 911 Exterior Photographed On Main Straight At Race TrackPorsche\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2000GT began to take shape after Toyota sent product planners and engineers around the world to study other automakers’ operations, and later purchased a fleet of sports cars, including a Lotus Elan<\/a>, a Jaguar E-Type<\/a>, and a Porsche 911<\/a>. Those three cars, as it turned out, became the most influential on what the 2000GT\u2019s purpose in life would be.<\/p>\n

The final product looked like the Jaguar, had a near-identical frame to the Lotus, and beat the records Porsche was chasing. A 150-horsepower DOHC 2.0-liter straight-six mated to a five-speed synchronized gearbox would be the powertrain of choice, putting the 2000GT in a strong standing to outpace the benchmarked fleet it purchased.<\/p>\n

The 2000GT debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show in August 1965, with production models set for arrival by 1967. During this time, Toyota and Yamaha were still proving their new sports car by entering it in prominent motorsport events, such as the Japan Grand Prix at Fuji International Speedway in 1966, where the 2000GT placed third.<\/p>\n

A month later, in June 1966, the 2000GT earned its first win at the inaugural running of the Suzuka 1000 Kilometers. In 1967, it took a 1-2 finish at the first Fuji 24 Hour race. If the homegrown motorsport victories weren\u2019t enough, Toyota let Hollywood get its hands on two bespoke white convertible 2000GT\u2019s built for the 1967 James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice.<\/p>\n

The World Now Knew Toyota\u2019s Name<\/p>\n

If the wins weren\u2019t enough for Toyota, and the product placement in that year\u2019s Bond film didn\u2019t cut it, then quite frankly, the world wouldn\u2019t be enough. Nevertheless, it still took a stab at it. In October 1966, with successful races under its belt, Toyota took one of the cars to the Yatabe Test Course north of Tokyo. During the 72-hour endurance trial, a tropical storm rolled through, and a downpour ensued while the car turned laps of the 5.5-kilometer oval. Both the driver and the 2000GT shrugged off the subpar conditions and smashed through a dozen FIA international speed and endurance records. It maintained an average speed\u2014including stops\u2014of 128.76 MPH.<\/p>\n

Like any story about new competition rising from nowhere, the ones who set the records wanted them back. Porsche would reclaim those titles with a 911 R in 1967, maintaining an average speed of 129 MPH around Monza. Still, the 2000GT was proof that Japan was an up-and-coming force in the automobile industry. Its growing economy was showing strong signs of recovery nearly 20 years after the end of WWII.<\/p>\n

The 2000GT was a first for all the reasons above, but it was among the first cars designed and built in Japan to show the world what it could do, money no object. And no cost was spared to make the car as perfect as possible for production, which started in 1967. Just over 350 cars were built\u2014of which 20 or so were pre-production prototypes or used for racing\u2014between 1967 and 1970. At $6,800 a pop, it was some $1,500 more than a Jaguar XK-E, and on par with the Porsche 911 S. The dark side of building Japan\u2019s darling sports car was what it cost Toyota.<\/p>\n

Apart from the money spent on the development contracted out to Yamaha, taking it racing, and building two for use as movie props, legend says Toyota lost money on every single unit sold. Those who didn\u2019t know of its importance would laugh off its Porsche-level price tag. Plus, by the time it was on sale, the same money could buy the car that took the records stolen from it. Toyota closed the book after the last of the cars sold in 1970 and took a break from building luxury sports coupes before the company would make a name for itself once more.<\/p>\n

Toyota\u2019s Sports Cars Return to Their Roots<\/p>\n

\"1976
\n 1976 toyota celica gtToyota<\/p>\n

For the 1971 model year, a small, two-door 2+2 coupe arrived hot on the heels of the 2000GT. The Celica had a different mission from its more expensive sibling. The car was more affordable and had styling evoking American muscle cars of the era. In 1979, Toyota further expanded the range by introducing the Celica Supra with an inline-six engine under the hood. In 1986, this model became simply the Supra. The Celica remained a less expensive, performance-oriented model, and both of them went racing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Toyota\u2019s success wasn’t rooted in building the most expensive cars around. Still, every time it stepped away from building affordable bread-and-butter offerings, such as the Camry<\/a> or Corolla<\/a>, it was for the same reasons Toyota wanted to build the 2000GT in the first place. The creation of Lexus<\/a> enabled further experimentation with world-beating vehicles, such as the LFA<\/a> supercar. And that story, if you don\u2019t already know, is eerily similar to the one written about its grandfather<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The GR Cars of 2026 Have Heard Their Family\u2019s Story<\/p>\n

\"2026
\n 2026 Toyota GR Yaris front 3\/4Toyota South Africa Motors<\/p>\n

In more recent times, Toyota has focused on cheaper performance vehicles, available to a broader swath of the population. The automaker’s Gazoo Racing performance division took models such as the Yaris<\/a> and Corolla and turned them into more exciting machines.<\/p>\n

The strategy has proven successful for Toyota, and the same goes for cars built with help from others\u2014another tactic Toyota used to make the 2000GT possible. Whether it\u2019s working with Subaru<\/a> as a partner to build affordable sports cars or connecting with BMW<\/a> to revive the Supra<\/a>, Toyota has learned to make friends rather than chase them down to assert short-lived dominance.<\/p>\n

The upcoming GR GT<\/a> pays homage to its namesake in more ways than one. It is Toyota\u2019s future halo car, highlighting the ingenuity of the company’s best and brightest. Plus, the long-hood proportions give both cars a similar silhouette. The automaker is crafting a cutting-edge powertrain for the new machine, including a freshly developed V8 <\/a>with a hot-vee twin-turbocharged layout and hybrid assistance. The result could be another world-beater from Toyota.<\/p>\n

Sources: Toyota UK Magazine<\/a>, Hagerty<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lineage of Toyota sports cars did not begin with a slow, gradual climb through the ranks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-551597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}