Limited-production of 351, limited slip differential -rear wheel drive, longitudinally mounted 2.0 litre straight six engine, top speed of 217 km/h, two-seat, aluminium bodywork, rosewood-veneer dashboard, sleek fastback hardtop coupé Grand Turismo. No, I am not talking about an exotic Italian Super Car. This is the Toyota 2000 GT from 1965.
Yes, it only produced 150 bhp and was front engined, but what a beauty. Extremely low to the ground with that coke bottle styling and pop up headlights made this car a stunner. It’s no wonder, that James Bond ditched his Aston Martin for the Toyota in “You Only Live Twice”. ( It is rumored that the burly 6′ 2” Sean Connery couldn’t be accommodated in the car because his head stuck out of the roof, and a topless version was fabricated in just two weeks for the movie)
In 1983, Toyota re-worked this magical formula in the AE 86, better known in Japan as the Hachi-Roku (ハチロク).
It had an FR layout and was the car of choice for the Japanese illegal drifting scene that popularized the sport. With only a 1.6-litre engine powering the rear wheels, it could be pushed to its absolute limit, using any number of techniques to drift around an apex, the most famous of which was the “feint”, where you would steer the wrong way, then the right, to shift the car’s momentum. You could literally drift this car from one corner to the next, all while flooring the throttle and red lining its magnificent little engine. The “Drifto Kingo” Keiichi Tsuchiya would agree that there is no other car out there that can give the driver so much thrill, as the 86.
Until, of course, the Toyota GT86 arrived on the scene in 2012.
The contemporary spiritual successor of this lineage was a joint venture between Subaru and Toyota. It resulted in a fabulous flat four boxer engine, with the infamous throaty rumble mated to a perfectly balanced chassis and tire geometry. It’s a shame that the car comes factory fitted with Prius Tires that scream and wail when driven hard ( perhaps that’s part of the fun ). Around the track, with thicker rubber and engine mods, this car is an absolute hoot, rivaling times of much bigger and more powerful machines. I guess the Toyota Boffins got it right the third time around as well. It would be fitting if Daniel Craig could drive this car in the next imaginary Bond Film “You only live thrice.”
Aerospace Dynamics 