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

[Music] these days everyone talks about just how quickly the korean car companies have evolved and they have hyundai went from making the xl to the genuinely excellent cars it makes today and that took just 36 years compare that to toyota because over 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 you want to talk about evolving quickly toyota went from toyo pet to toyo porsche beater in about as long as it takes to make an update to a 911 [Music] after world war ii the japanese automotive industry earned itself a reputation for being copycats this wasn't strictly untrue as a means to fast-tracking products to market and keeping its workforce busy many japanese companies elected to license production of existing products from european automakers toyota decided to go at it alone which meant that the learning curve would be steeper but it also meant that toyota would start at the back of the pack which it did with the toyo pet crown the first toyota sold in america and it would have been laughed out of dealerships had it been powerful or reliable enough to make it to the dealerships in the first place which it wasn't and it didn't stories abound about attempted reliability runs that ended up being cancelled because the cars didn't make it los angeles to new york nope the toyo bet didn't make it past vegas la to san francisco well it sort of made it but then it had to be towed back the toyo pet had simply not been engineered to cope with the rigors of u.s highways toyota would fix that but it needed something to show america and the world that toyota could compete with the best the 1960s way to do that 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 creating a grand tourer to compete with the gts coming from the continent enter yamaha and a little bit of a backstory yamaha was traditionally a manufacturer of pianos and of motorcycles but had been considering getting in the car industry by 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 six-week long grand tour of the us and europe so they can observe how other companies built cars and what the guys saw at porsche and at pinon farina in particular inspired them to build a low-volume sports car a low-volume sports car would have more profit built in than a k-car would plus it's cooler so they formed the yamaha institute for the research and development of high performance sports cars and created the a550x a monocoque chassis two-seater with a twin cam four-cylinder that the company hoped would become the nissan z it didn't nissan thought the thing was crude and said forget it forget about the whole project so yamaha brought the a550x to toyota and said hey guys let's build this and toyota was like no it's crude forget about the whole project but toyota was really impressed that yamaha had pulled that off and thought maybe yamaha would be a really good partner to engineer and build a sports car of toyota's own design so toyota sent over a few young enthusiast engineers to chaperone the project and for inspiration purchased an mgb a triumph tr-2 a twin cam abarth porsche 911 lotus salon and jaguar e-type they tested them all and unsurprisingly the jaguar became the benchmark for road behavior unfortunately the jaguar's chassis was far too complicated for yamaha to build the lotus elans chassis on the other hand well it was just a very simple backbone structure made at a very easily workable sheet steel yamaha stopped one step short of making an exact copy of the lotus salon's chassis and instead made an exact copy of the lotus salons chassis yep they just stole it but they beefed it up so that instead of 1.2 millimeter thick steel it was 2.3 and instead of the center section measuring 9 inches wide by 9.8 deep well yamaha's was completely different because it was 5.9 wide independent halftone obviously the e-type's incredibly long hood was an aesthetic inspiration but if you look at the 2000 gt's backbone chassis you realize the driver had to be that far back from the motor just a bit in the car you may also wonder where is the side impact crash structure well here's the answer you are the crumple zone oh 1960s crash technology but also 1960s styling by the way this is the most beautiful greenhouse to ever be put on an automobile and this delicate beautiful kick up well that wasn't even done for aesthetic reasons the lotus type suspension means the shock tower is up here a foot above the main structure of the car and so they had to obscure it with this kick up oh the price we pay for independent suspension by the way speaking of price everything on this car every component was the best available cost no object the specs read like a car from 30 years newer that four-wheel independent suspension with double wishbones at every corner and anti-roll bars front and rear four-wheel disc brakes rack and pinion steering with only 2.7 turns lock to lock standard limited slip differential and a 5-speed fully synchronized manual that this stuff came from a japanese automaker was a very big deal a lot of this stuff was a first for japan remember toyota had been selling cars on the world stage at this point for what three minutes the europeans were at it for years jaguar had been selling sports cars for three decades and still couldn't figure out how to wire the bloody things that smoke is on purpose having the best stuff meant no four-cylinder toyota sent over its two-liter straight six from the flagship sedan and paid yamaha to create a double overhead cam head for it the result was a 7000 rpm 6 making 150 horsepower a full third more than the two-valve version you might be thinking jason i just saw a revelations episode where you covered a car that looks just like this has the same specs this must be a copycat of the nissan z but it's not uh the 2000 gt can't be a copycat of the z because the toyota came first they may look similar but these two cars are not related not directly anyway there is a common thread yamaha after both companies said no to yamaha's a550x toyota went to work on this and when nissan saw toyota's gt at the 1965 tokyo show and then watched it be featured so prominently in a bond movie shortly thereafter they said oh my god we screwed up we need to build a sports car too and quickly 294 here tiger immediately the infamously famous self-promoting german aristocrat albrecht gertz tried to take credit for both of these cars no the reason they're so similar is that their products of the same time the same place and the same thought process that's all watch our revelations episode on this z for more info on that but aside from the straight 6 rear drive 2 passenger layout and sexy body these two cars share nothing especially when you get to the interior which is when it becomes obvious why this car cost as much as two and a half nissan z's that interior is stunning and the wood isn't some sort of veneer it was done by yamaha's piano division and it's a six millimeter thick slab of rosewood that's then covered with a polyester resin and by the way the steering wheel and the shift knob are mahogany the wood is stunning and this isn't the type of interior that you just look at for 15 seconds and you're done with you could spend hours looking at this interior at all of the beautiful little intricate pieces which is a really good thing because getting in and out of this little tiny car is a genuine pain in the ass but once you're in here you might as well get comfy and oh man oh look at that and notice things like the ultra fine vertical defroster elements in the rear glass or the handbrake lever it's a work of art worthy of being in a rolls royce feeling like it's riding on ball bearings the whole rolls-royce comparison isn't quite as outrageous as you might think this thing does a better imitation of a v12 grand tourer than most v12 grand tours even though it's kind of a petite tour it's tiny in here but it's a very civilized car to drive it's really quiet in fact the loudest thing you hear is from the transmission and the shifter is among the snicketiest precise shifter you will ever feel the 2000 gt wasn't designed to be a cheap car but it wound up being more expensive than most of the cars it competed against its sticker price was some 40 more than the jaguar e-type or porsche 911 and again it handily outperformed the porsche 911 in 1966 the 2000 gt earned toyota one of japan's first genuinely important set of fia speed records over the course of three days the gt averaged [Music] 128.76 miles an hour including stops and rain and everything else it was enough to break 16 world and international speed and endurance records in the process that was enough for porsha to pack up and head straight to nardo to take its record back in a 911 r it would be 45 years before those two companies did production car battle again and by then the yardstick had changed from straight-line speed to nurburgring lap time but in 2011 a lexus lfa took the norch life a lap record from a porsche 911 gt2 rs so the lfa and 2000 gt share more than just their toyota parent and their yamaha involvement and their slightly outrageous price and limited sales volumes neither car really made sense in its moment but you wait a couple years you look back in history and they both became incredible halos for their brand in that sense this really is the world's first lexus and judging by the speed at which the 2000 gt catapulted toyota from toyo pet to world beater this may well be the world's fastest car [Music] [Music] okay so you're just gonna keep the ferrari framed out the entire time right yep 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Channel: Hagerty

Views: 1,418,182

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, goertz, z432, nissan z, rolls royce, lexus, lexus lf-a, nürburgring, nordschleife, Jason camisa, camisa, camissa, Doug demuro, throttle house, carwow, top gear, chris harris, porsche, 911r, world record, speed record, endurance record, lf-a, lfa nurburgring, lexus lfa, lfa, lf a, First toyota, toyopet, toyopet crown, toyota crown, 240z, 280z, sound, acceleration, pov, drive, hill climb, mountain, noise, exhaust

Id: i7cFP2s1s3I

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022