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Toyota is currently one of Japan's biggest automakers, selling more cars than VW & General Motors in 2012, and has produced over 200 million vehicles.
The company was founded in 1936 as Toyoda, named after founder Kiichiro Toyoda, and they completed work on their first passenger car, the Model AA, in April. The car sold for 3,350 Yen which was around 400 Yen cheaper than the Ford or GM equivalent.
The AA was the only car to be sold under the Toyoda name, as the name was changed in September 1936 to Toyota. The name was changed because it took 8 brush strokes to write in Japanese (8 was seen as a lucky number), was visually simpler and because Toyoda literally means "fertile rice paddies". The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the Toyota Motor Company.
The Model AA started production in 1936 and ended in production in 1943. It was a fully enclosed sedan that largely copied the design of the Chrysler built DeSoto Airflow with a metal body over a ladder chassis with rear suicide doors.
Powering the AA was a 3.4 Inline 6 producing 60BHP and was largely based on the Chevrolet Stovebolt OHV, with the Toyota engine producing more power. Toyota wanted to base it on the more popular Ford Flathead V8 but it would have added too much to the production cost.
For the AA's 50th Anniversary in 1987, Toyota wanted to use an original AA but no original examples had survivied so Toyota decided to build a replica but even this proved challenging. The only original plans that could be found were from various points during development and were often incomplete and inconsistent, as well as being lacking by today's standards. Despite this setback, a single replica was built and currently resides in the Toyota Automotive Museum.
Toyota also produced a similar model in 1996 called the "Toyota Classic". It heavily resembled the 1936 AA and was powered by a 2.0 3Y-E Engine producing 100HP with 100 cars being built to celebrate the AA's 60th Anniversary.
In 2008, an original Toyota AA was found in Russia in derelict condition and is currently being displayed, still in it's original condition, at the Louwman Museum in the Netherlands.
Specifications:
Body: 5 Door Sedan
Engine: Toyoda "Type A" 3.4 Inline 6
Gearbox: 3 Speed Manual
Power: 60 BHP
Aspiration: Naturally Aspirated
Weight: 1500 KG
