Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: toyota 2000gt (Page 1 of 2)

The Toyota 2000GT You Only Own Twice [Collections]

Welcome to this collections video!

Toyota 2000GT: Japanese Supercar

Eventhough the Toyota 2000GT wasn’t entirely 100% Toyota as Yamaha built all of them, including the all aluminium body and the double overhead cam heads. Still the Toyota 2000GT was recognized as the first Japanese super car and it impressed the international press of what Japan and Toyota were capable of.
The Toyota 2000GT You Only Own Twice
This Toyota 2000GT is an early 1967 left hand drive model and is part of the Louwman collection and exhibited in the Louwman museum in The Hague. You can tell it is an early model by the larger driving lamps, the shape of the front turn signal lamps and the smaller rear turn signal lamps.

The owner, Evert Louwman, also owns another early left hand drive model 2000GT (you can’t have enough 2000GTs!) which is exhibited in the Dutch Toyota museum in Raamdonksveer. A fun fact is that the 2000GT never got exported to the Netherlands. The car in the museum in The Hague has been imported in 2006 while the one in the museum in Raamdonksveer had been imported already in 1976. That also means he owns two out of the 85 left hand drive 2000GTs.

Did I already mention he likes rare and exclusive cars?

Rare and exclusive cars

Let’s go quickly through the checklist:
Steve McQueen’s 1971 Baja Buggy? Check!
One of the original James Bond Aston Martin DB3s used in Goldfinger? Check!
Lexus LFA with serial number 001? Check!
Toyota 7 Turbo race car? Check!
Only remaining Toyota AA dragged from a Russian barn? Check!
Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda’s company Century? Check!
Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda’s desk? Check!

We can only dream of owning one single car out of such an amazing collection!

If you ever are in the neighborhood of The Hague or The Netherlands I can definitely recommend visiting the museum!

The address of the museum is:
Louwman Museum
Leidsestraatweg 57
2594 BB
The Hague
The Netherlands
(the Dutch Toyota Museum is a private collection which you can only visit upon invitation)

Direct link to video

Count the Toyota 2000GTs in this picture!

Sorry for the small scale, but this picture was taken from Minkara and is too amazing not to post:
Count the Toyota 2000GTs in this picture!
In case you really want to count them: you can include the Toyota 2000GT SEV in the foreground. ;)

Just imagine the amount of money this lineup is worth: the 2000GT averages somewhere around the $400,000 dollars (the Carroll Shelby is an outlier) and I counted at least 12 of them and the line just continues. 12 times $400,000 is just short of $5,000,000 dollar!

To put this a bit into perspective, have a look at this amazing Toyota Corona T140 lineup: Continue reading

Toyota 2000GT ReBORN into a SEV

Last week I already spotted a few pictures (and posts) about this crazy project at the Tokyo Auto Salon: someone is turning a Toyota 2000GT into a solar powered electrical vehicle!
Crazy car project: Toyota 2000GT SEV
The engine fitted is a 161hp electrical engine, so it keeps the power roughly the same. The hood and rear window are both a solar power panel and charge the batteries while you drive. And the car is still capable of driving over 200 km/h. Just imagine: a 45 year old super rare car (only 337 build!) is converted to an electrical equivalent!

The best news is that I found a video about the project: Continue reading

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