This particular Toyota was indeed the rarest of the few. It was a Toyota 2000GT, a model manufactured from 1967 to 1971. Only 351 were produced. But this is more than Toyota. There is another name that makes it the 1967 Toyota-Shelby 2000GT. Astute car history observers may remember the Shelby name as that of world-renowned racer and manufacturer Carol Shelby.
Toyota-Shelby 2000GT was built in 1966 and is technically a pre-production model. It had a chassis number MF10-10001, which means it was the first 2000GT to even receive a serial number.
It was originally painted red and was used as a demonstration car in the United States, allowing Toyota to show the product to prospective US customers. After a while, it, along with two other 2000GTs, was given to Shelby so that it could turn them into competing race cars. The plan was to give the 2000GT a true pedigree on a racetrack for marketing purposes.
This story is why, while other Toyota 2000GTs could cost over $ 1 million, making them among the most valuable Japanese cars in the world, it cost three times as much. This price makes this vehicle the most valuable Japanese car ever sold at auction. It was sold at auction for collector’s cars of Gooding & Co. on the island of Amelia. The final sale price includes approximately 10% of the fee paid to the auction company.
In the late 1960s, Toyota was known as a supplier of cheap transportation for those who wanted to take a risk with a car from Japan. Wanting to change that image, Toyota led its designer Satoru Nozaki to come up with the 2000GT, a sports car that looked much more like a Ferrari than the Toyota Crown or Corona, cars Toyota was known for. at the time.
This was not Toyota’s first sports car. The cute 44-horsepower Sports 800 came out just a few years earlier. But the 2000GT was on a completely different level. With a starting price of over $ 7,000, which is about $ 60,000 today, the 2000GT cost more than the Porsche 911 or Jaguar XKE at the time. It was much more than any other Toyota model.
For the money, the buyers received a real performance. The Yamaha’s 2000GT six-cylinder engine can deliver up to 150 horsepower and accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 10 seconds. Its acceleration can easily be overcome by a modern family carrier, such as Toyota Highlander’s hybrid SUV, but the speed of the 2000GT was respectable, if not incredible for its time.
One of the reasons the 2000GT may not have been as popular in the 1960s as Toyota had hoped – the company planned to make up to 1,000 a year, according to Gooding – was that it just wasn’t as fast as its European ones. competitors, said John Wiley, an analyst at the value of collector cars from Hagerty Automotive Intelligence. After all, it was the first true Japanese world-class sports car, he said.
The real problem, however, was simply the price, according to Gooding. Toyota was losing too much money for each of them to continue production.
Toyota declined to comment on the reasons for the long-standing decision to stop production of the car. Ben Hsu, author of Classic Japanese Production Cars, cites both production costs and a lack of demand. Toyota had gone further, in price and prestige, than customers were willing to go.
“When you get to that level, people buy for status and the badge matters,” he said.
The interior of the 2000GT is finished in the same wood used for Yamaha grand pianos, according to the Hsu book. With its wooden rim and three thin spokes, the steering wheel of the 2000GT looked like an expensive Italian or British sports car. The Toyota 2000GT was even featured in the 1967 James Bond movie “You Only Live Twice.” The car in this movie was a “convertible” version without a roof, because Sean Connery, the actor who played Bond, was too tall to fit in otherwise. (The 2000GT was never produced in a convertible as a production car.) This James Bond connection also added to the car’s collector’s value, Wiley said.
Shelby has made many changes to prepare the 2000GT for racing. Among other things, the rosewood dashboard was replaced with textured metal and paint KONI adjustable shock absorbers as well as a safety roll bar have been added. Engine power was increased to 210 horsepower. He also repainted the car white and glossy blue. This particular car was used as a development model by Shelby and kept as an alternative in case one of the other two could not compete. By the end of the 1968 racing season, Shelby’s Toyotas finished fourth in their racing series after Porsche and Triumph cars, according to Gooding.
One of the other Toyota-Shelby 2000GTs is in the Toyota Automobile Museum in Japan, but has been repainted and no longer looks like this, according to Gooding. The other is in a collection of private cars somewhere in the United States.
The only other Japanese car with values close to the Toyota 2000GT is the much newer Lexus LFA, a car that can be considered the modern equivalent. An exotic car manufactured by Toyota’s luxury division from 2010 to 2012, the LFA also had an engine produced in collaboration with Yamaha, in this case the V10. Only 500 were made with prices starting at $ 375,000. As with the 2000GT, Toyota had difficulty selling them all during their production cycle, Hsu said, but prices jumped after the end of the production cycle.
A particularly rare Nürburgring Edition LFA, named after the famous German racetrack, was sold at auction last August for $ 1.6 million.