1967 Toyota Sports 800
I love Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) automobiles. These were cars built specifically for the Japanese market, and the best of them were either higher performance versions of vehicles sold to the USA, or low-production cars only available in the Far East. The Toyota Sports 800 is a very special JDM car by all measures. The prototype debuted at the 1962 Tokyo Auto Show and was an instant sensation. The Sports 800 was the company’s first foray into sports cars, and period publications touted that Toyota got the entire package right. The 800 was light, nimble, affordable and ultra-cool. It also presaged the coming Toyota 2000GT. What more could a Japanese enthusiast want-for in the 1960s?
The production Sports 800 was styled by Shozo Sato as an attractive two-door roadster with covered headlights, a fully trimmed interior and a lift-out aluminum roof panel that predated the Porsche Targa. The mechanical aspects of the design were overseen by Toyota’s in-house engineering ace, Tatsuo Hasegawa. The team paid great attention to the aerodynamic aspects of the skin, which resulted in an impressive coefficient of drag of just 0.30.
