The Toyota 2000GT was the fastest brand-building halo ever | Revelations with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 25

Nowadays

ever

yone talks about how quickly Korean car companies have evolved and how Hyundai went from making the xl to the really great cars they make today and that took only 36 years, compared to Toyota, because in a period of just eight years,

toyota

went from making the toyo pet crown, which was terrible, to the 2000 gt, which won 13 international and three world endurance speed records, most of which it stole from porsche, than you want speak, evolved rapidly.

toyota

went from toyo pet to toyo porsche beater in about The time it takes to upgrade a 911 after world war ii the japanese auto industry gained a reputation as a copycat, this was not strictly false as a means of speeding up the market of products and keep their workforce busy, many Japanese companies.

Choosing to license production of existing products from European automakers, Toyota decided to go it alone, which meant the learning curve would be steeper, but it also meant Toyota would start at the back of the pack, which it did with the crown. of Toyo's pets the first time. Toyota was sold in America and dealers would have laughed at it if it had been powerful or reliable enough to make it to dealerships in the first place, which it didn't and stories about reliability attempts ending up being canceled are not plentiful. because the cars didn't make it from Los Angeles to New York, no, Toyo's bet didn't make it from Las Vegas to San Francisco, well, it kind of made it, but then it had to be towed back, Toyo's mascot just didn't It had been designed to stand up to the rigors of American roads, Toyota would fix that, but it needed something to show America and the world that Toyota could compete with the best.

The way to do it in the '60s was to make a sports car. Honda had the s600. Mazda had the cosmo. datsun had its roadster and toyota was going to beat them all by creating a grand tourer to compete with the gts coming from the mainland enter yamaha and a bit of backstory yamaha was traditionally a manufacturer of pianos and motorcycles but had been considering entering the industry automotive

building

a k car meanwhile, yamaha and nissan shared a creditor and that creditor suggested that the two companies work together for their own good, so yamaha sent two of its employees on a grand six-week tour of the US.

U.S. and Europe so they could see how other companies built cars and what the guys saw at Porsche and at Piñon Farina in particular inspired them to build a low-volume sports car. A low-volume sports car would have more built-in profits than a K-car, plus it's cooler so they formed the Yamaha Institute for High-Performance Sports Car Research and Development and created the a550x, a two-seat monocoque chassis with dual camshaft and four cylinder that the company hoped would become the nissan z, but nissan thought the thing was crude and said: forget it, forget about the whole project, so yamaha took the a550x to toyota and said: "Hey guys, let's build this," and Toyota said no, it's crude, forget about the whole project, but Toyota was really impressed that Yamaha had pulled it off and I thought maybe Yamaha would be a really good partner to design and build a Toyota's own designed sports car, so Toyota sent some enthusiastic young engineers to accompany the project and, for inspiration, bought an MGB, a Triumph TR-2, a twin-cam Abarth Porsche 911.

Lotus Salon and Jaguar E-Type tested them all and, unsurprisingly, the Jaguar became the benchmark for road manners. Unfortunately, the Jaguar chassis was too complicated for Yamaha to build the Lotus Elans chassis. On the other hand, well, it was just a very simple core structure. made in a very easy to work sheet steel yamaha stopped one step away from making an exact copy of the lotus hall chassis and instead made an exact copy of the lotus hall chassis yes they just stole it but they reinforced it to that instead of 1.2 millimeters of thick steel it was 2.3 and instead of the center section measuring 9 inches wide by 9.8 deep, the Yamaha one was completely different because it was 5.9 wide in independent semitone, obviously the hood The e-type's incredibly long length was an aesthetic inspiration, but if you look at the 2000 GT backbone chassis, you realize that the driver had to be so far from the engine, a bit inside the car, you'll also wonder where it is. the side impact crash structure, well here's the answer, you're the crumple zone, oh, 60s crash technology, but also 60s style. the way this is the most beautiful greenhouse that has n

ever

been put on a car and this delicate and beautiful design that was not even done for aesthetic reasons the lotus suspension means that the shock tower is up here, a foot above the main structure of the car and that's why they had to darken it with this increase oh the price we paid for the independent suspension btw speaking of price everything on this car every component was the best cost available no problem the specs read like a 30 year newer car .

Four-wheel independent suspension with double wishbones at each corner and anti-roll bars Four-wheel disc brakes front and rear Rack-and-pinion steering with only 2.7 turns lock to standard limited-slip differential lock and a 5-speed manual totally synchronized this came from a japanese automaker it was a big deal many of these things were the first in japan remember toyota had been selling cars on the world stage at this time for three minutes the europeans were at this for years Jaguar had been selling sports cars for three decades and still couldn't figure out how to wire the damn things, that smoke is on purpose, having the best stuff meant no four-cylinder Toyota shipped its two-liter inline-six from the sedan flagship and paid Yamaha to create a double. overhead cam head, the result was a 7,000-rpm 6 making 150 horsepower, a third more than the two-valve version.

You might be thinking, Jason, I just watched a reveal episode where you covered a car that looks like this and has the same specs. this should be a nissan z imitator but it's not, the 2000 gt can't be a z imitator because the toyota came first, they may look similar but these two cars are not related not directly anyway, there is a common yamaha thread after both companies said no to yamaha's a550x, toyota got to work on this and when nissan saw the toyota gt at the 1965 tokyo show and then saw it appear so prominently in a bond film shortly after , they said oh my God, we've screwed it up, we have to do it. build a sports car too and quickly 294 here tiger immediately the infamous and famous self proclaimed german aristocrat albrecht gertz tried to take credit for both cars no, the reason they are so similar is that their products are from the same era, in the same place and Same thought process that's all check out our reveals episode on this z to learn more about it, but other than the straight-line rear-drive 6-passenger layout and the sexy bodywork, these two cars share nothing , especially when you get inside, which is when it becomes obvious.

Why does this car cost as much as two and a half Nissan Zs? That interior is impressive and the wood is not some kind of veneer, it was made by Yamaha's piano division and is a six millimeter thick slab of rosewood that is then covered with a polyester resin. and by the way, the steering wheel and shift knob are mahogany, the wood is stunning and this is not the type of interior that you just look at for 15 seconds and voila, you could spend hours looking at this interior. of the beautiful little intricate pieces, which is really good because getting in and out of this little car is a real pain in the ass, but once you're here, you might as well get comfortable and oh man, oh look at that and look things like the ultra-thin vertical defroster elements on the rear glass or the handbrake lever.

It is a work of art worthy of being in a Rolls Royce. It feels like it's riding on ball bearings. The whole comparison between Rolls and Royce is not as outrageous as you. You might think this thing does a better job of imitating a V12 grand tourer than most V12 grand tourers, although it's kind of a small tourer, it's small here, but it's a very civilized car to drive, it's very quiet, in fact the most The noise you hear is from the transmission and the shifter is among the sleekest and most precise you've ever felt. The 2000 gt was not designed to be a cheap car, but it ended up being more expensive than most of the cars it competed with.

Its sticker price was about £40 more than the Jaguar E-Type or Porsche 911 and it again handily beat the Porsche 911 in 1966. The 2000 GT earned Toyota one of Japan's first genuinely important Fia speed records over the course of three years. days the gt averaged 128.76 miles per hour including stops and rain and everything else was enough to break 16 world and international speed and endurance records in the process that was enough for porsha to pack her bags and head straight to nardo to regain their record in a 911 r it would be 45 years before those two companies fought again with production cars and by then the criterion had changed from straight line speed to Nürburgring lap time, but in 2011 a Lexus Lfa took a Porsche 911 GT2 RS lap record from the norch life, so the LFA and 2000 GT share more than just their toyota parent and their yamaha stake and their slightly outrageous pricing and limited sales volumes, Neither car really made sense at the time, but you wait a couple of years and look back in history and they both became incredible

halo

s for their

brand

in that sense, this really is the world's first Lexus and judging For the speed at which the 2000 GT catapulted Toyota from Toyo Pet to world beater, this may well be the

fastest

car in the world, okay, so you'll keep the Ferrari in frame the entire time, right, yeah, okay, action.

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I need to go clean that