Toyota 2000GT

Satoru Nozaki has said the Jaguar E-Type was on his mind, and you can see it in the long bonnet and the fastback tail. What he actually drew is not a copy of anything. The 2000GT is shorter and much lower than the Jaguar, standing under 1.2 metres to its highest point, and the detailing is entirely its own: pop-up headlamps sitting above fixed driving lamps behind plexiglass covers, a deep grille aperture, near-absent bumpers, and a roofline that runs from screen to tail without interruption. Yamaha's contribution shows inside. The dashboard and console are rosewood, cut and finished by craftsmen from the company's musical-instrument operation, and that woodwork is the detail most owners mention first. Magnesium wheels, an auto-seek radio, an electric clock and a stopwatch were all standard equipment. The 1969 cars lost the plexiglass lamp covers to regulations and gained a revised nose, which is the one visual change worth knowing. Six colours were offered, with names like Solar Red and Bellatrix Yellow. Nothing about the shape looks dated now, and very few 1967 designs survive that test.

Toyota built the 2000GT to be believed, and racing was how it made the argument. In October 1966, before a single customer car existed, one ran for 72 hours at the Yatabe high-speed track at an average of 206.02km/h, taking three world records and thirteen international records in the 1500 to 2000cc class. On circuit it took third in the 1966 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji, won the inaugural Suzuka 1000km the same year, and in 1967 won both the Fuji 24 Hours and the Fuji 1000km. The American chapter is real and routinely overstated. Carroll Shelby ran two cars, chassis MF10-10005 and MF10-10006, in 1968 SCCA C-Production with Dave Jordan and Scooter Patrick driving. They took four wins, eight second places and six thirds, finishing fourth in the class championship behind Porsche 911s that simply had more power. It was the only season the cars ran in the United States, and Toyota stopped afterwards. Both surviving cars stayed in America, and one sold for $2.5 million in 2022. A strong first attempt against established opposition, then, not a title. The difference matters, and a lot of write-ups do not make it.

The 2000GT's most famous appearance is also its most misunderstood. For You Only Live Twice in 1967, Toyota cut the roof off two cars and fitted them with tonneau covers, reportedly because Sean Connery could not fit inside the coupe. The conversion was done in under two weeks. There was never a production convertible, and those two open cars are specials rather than a variant. Aki, played by Akiko Wakabayashi, does the driving; Bond is a passenger. Daniel Craig later named it his favourite Bond car of them all. The deeper impact was on reputation. Road & Track called it one of the most exciting and enjoyable cars they had driven, which was not the register Western magazines used about Japanese cars in 1967. It arrived exactly when the assumption that Japan built appliances stopped being tenable. At home it remains Toyota's crown jewel. The company keeps cars in its own museum, reproduces parts for owners through the GR Heritage programme, and puts the 2000GT front and centre whenever it wants to remind anybody what it is capable of.

Almost nobody uses a 2000GT as transport, and the reasons are practical as much as financial. It is a very small car, under 1.2 metres tall, with a cabin sized for 1967 Japan. Visibility over the long bonnet takes learning and the pedal box is tight. None of that is a fault. It is simply what the car is. Mechanically it is more robust than the value suggests. The 3M six is a Toyota Crown block with a Yamaha head and it is not fragile. The three Mikuni-Solex carburettors need balancing and a sympathetic hand, and they are the single most common reason a 2000GT runs badly rather than well. What owners actually think about is irreplaceability. Magnesium wheels corrode and cannot casually be replaced. The plexiglass lamp covers craze. The rosewood marks. Body panels do not exist in any meaningful supply, so damaging one is a serious event rather than an inconvenience. Owning one means driving it carefully and insuring it properly, and the encouraging part of the story is that most owners do drive them.