46 Fun Facts About Toyota

Which member of the Toyoda family founded Toyota Motor in 1937?

Kiichiro Toyoda established Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. on 28 August 1937, spinning the car business out of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, the company his father Sakichi had founded in 1926.

Why did Toyota's founders respell the family name 'Toyoda' for their car company in 1936?

Eight brush strokes are lucky, tied to wealth and good fortune, and 'Toyota' in katakana takes exactly eight; the company adds that its 't' was judged a clearer sound than the 'd' in Toyoda.

Patent rights to Sakichi Toyoda's automatic loom were sold in 1929 to a firm in which country?

United Kingdom: Platt Brothers of Oldham, once the world's largest maker of textile machinery, agreed to pay £100,000 for rights to the self-stopping loom, money often said to have seeded the family's car venture.

What was Toyota's first passenger car, completed in April 1936?

The Model AA, a six-cylinder sedan whose streamlined styling borrowed from the Chrysler Airflow, was completed in April 1936 as the firm's first production passenger car, following the A1 prototype of 1935.

What was Toyota's home city in Aichi Prefecture called before it took the company's name in 1959?

Koromo renamed itself on 1 January 1959 because of its biggest employer's fame, then twinned with Detroit, America's motor city, a year later.

Which two engineers developed the Toyota Production System between 1948 and 1975?

Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda shaped the Toyota Production System between 1948 and 1975 around two pillars, just-in-time and jidoka, and it later inspired the wider idea of lean manufacturing.

The Toyota Production System's just-in-time approach was famously inspired by what?

Supermarket shelves, not Detroit's car plants, gave Toyota the model: staff restock only what shoppers take, so each work station makes only what the next one has used.

Which Japanese word for 'continuous improvement' is central to Toyota's philosophy?

Kaizen has American roots: the practice grew out of methods that US advisers taught Japanese industry during the rebuilding after World War II, which Toyota then made its own.

Which root-cause technique did Sakichi Toyoda pioneer?

The 5 Whys traces a fault back by asking 'why?' again and again, so the fix hits the root cause rather than a symptom; Toyota teaches it to recruits as part of their induction.

Since 1997 the best-selling car nameplate of all time has been which Toyota?

The Corolla, sold across twelve generations since 1966, overtook the Volkswagen Beetle as the best-selling nameplate and passed 50 million cumulative sales in July 2021.

The name of Toyota's best-selling compact comes from the Latin for what?

Small crown is the Latin meaning, from a diminutive of corona; Toyota was carrying on a run of crown-themed car names begun by its Crown saloon.

Which Toyota, launched in Japan in 1997, has a Latin name meaning 'before'?

Prius is Latin for 'before' or 'earlier'; Toyota built it as its 'car for the 21st century' and beat the century to market with the world's first mass-produced petrol-electric car.

What does Toyota call its technology that blends a petrol engine with electric motors?

Hybrid Synergy Drive links engine and motors through a planetary gearset that acts like a continuously variable transmission, so the car can pull away on electric power alone.

Which is Toyota's longest-running model series, in production since 1951?

The Land Cruiser began in 1951 as the Toyota 'Jeep' BJ, built when the Korean War created demand for military utility vehicles; it took its present name in 1954 after Willys objected to 'Jeep'.

In 2012 a stock Toyota Tundra pickup towed which space shuttle across a Los Angeles freeway bridge?

Endeavour was too heavy for its usual transporters to cross the bridge over Interstate 405 on the way to its Los Angeles museum, so it rode a lighter dolly pulled by an unmodified Tundra.

The name of the Hilux pickup, launched in 1968, is a blend of which two words?

High and luxury make 'Hilux', a bold name for a work truck: it was a luxury only beside Toyota's spartan Stout pickup, and the first 1968 model was engineered and built by Hino.

Which Toyota pickup replaced the Hilux in North America in 1995?

The Tacoma was tuned for ride comfort, handling and safety rather than sheer toughness, because North American buyers used small pickups as everyday cars more than as work trucks.

Toyota's luxury brand Lexus launched in the US in 1989 with which flagship sedan?

The LS 400 arrived with a TV advert in which a pyramid of champagne glasses stood on its bonnet, unspilled, while the engine ran the car up to the equivalent of 145 mph.

What was Lexus's original marketing slogan?

'The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection' was coined after the ad team visited Lexus engineers in Japan and saw their obsession with detail; 'Experience Amazing' replaced the Pursuit line in 2017.

Toyota's youth-oriented North American brand, launched in 2003 and closed in 2016, was called what?

Scion went on sale in California in June 2003 to win over younger buyers; when Toyota closed it in 2016, its surviving models were simply rebadged as Toyotas.

Toyota's car plant at Georgetown, which built its first vehicle in May 1988, is in which US state?

Kentucky won the plant after Governor Martha Layne Collins made several trade missions to Japan and offered incentives that survived a court challenge; the first car rolled out in May 1988.

Two open-top Toyota 2000GT sports cars were specially built for which 1967 James Bond film?

You Only Live Twice was shot largely in Japan; the roofless cars were reportedly made in under two weeks because Sean Connery was too tall for the coupé's low roof.

What did the name RAV4 originally stand for?

Recreational Active Vehicle 4-wheel drive was the meaning at the 1994 launch; built on car rather than truck underpinnings, the RAV4 is widely credited with starting the compact crossover class.

Which electric carmaker helped Toyota build the second-generation RAV4 EV in 2012?

Tesla supplied the battery and motor under a deal struck in 2010, when Toyota bought $50 million of the young firm's shares; the electric RAV4 was sold only in California.

The Supra's name comes from a Latin prefix meaning what?

Above or beyond is the sense of the Latin 'supra'; the fifth generation, launched in 2019, was built in Graz, Austria, on the same line as its engineering twin, the BMW Z4.

Which film stars a rebuilt Supra?

The Fast and the Furious has undercover cop Brian O'Conner bring a wrecked Supra to Dom Toretto's garage to square the 'ten-second car' he owes; restored, it races Dom's Dodge Charger in the finale.

Mirai, the name of Toyota's hydrogen fuel-cell car, means what in Japanese?

Future is what 'mirai' means; a fuel cell turns hydrogen into electricity on board, so the only thing the car's tailpipe emits is water.

Akio Toyoda, president from 2009 to 2023, races under which pseudonym?

Morizo shares his name with the 'forest grandfather' mascot of the 2005 Aichi Expo; racing as Morizo, Toyota's boss crashed the first GR Yaris prototype on a midwinter test in Hokkaido.

Toyota's factory Formula One team competed from 2002 to 2009 with what result?

It never won a race in 139 starts, despite one of the biggest budgets in Formula One; five second places were its best results, and fourth in the 2005 constructors' table its best season.

Which Formula One champion shared Toyota's first Le Mans win in 2018?

Fernando Alonso won with Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, two years after Nakajima's leading Toyota lost power in the closing minutes and handed Porsche the win.

Toyota entered NASCAR's top series in 2007 with which model?

The Camry carried Toyota through a winless debut season; its first Cup victory came 40 races in, when Kyle Busch won at Atlanta in March 2008, and he took its first drivers' title in 2015.

Which Toyota won the make's first World Rally Championship manufacturers' titles, in 1993 and 1994?

Celica GT-Fours took both titles, but in 1995 Toyota was caught with an illegal turbo restrictor and banned for a year; the FIA's president called it the most sophisticated device he had seen.

Toyota's logo overlaps two inner ovals: the company's heart and whose?

Customers: Toyota says the 1989 emblem overlaps the two ovals to show trust between buyer and maker, and together they sketch a T.

Which small-car maker did Toyota take majority control of in 1998?

Daihatsu first teamed up with Toyota in 1967, when Japan was preparing to open its car market to foreign competition and capital.

The modern Toyota was created in 1982 when the carmaker merged with which sister firm?

Toyota Motor Sales had been split from the manufacturing company in 1950; reuniting them in 1982 created Toyota Motor Corporation, though insiders likened the two cultures to oil and water.

Toyota announced in 2014 that it would stop manufacturing vehicles in which country by the end of 2017?

Australia lost its last car plants within weeks of each other: Toyota's Altona factory in Melbourne built its final vehicle on 3 October 2017, and Holden shut down later that month.

Which rear-wheel-drive Toyota coupé was co-developed with Subaru and built at Subaru's Gunma plant?

The Toyota 86, twin of the Subaru BRZ, takes its number from the AE86, the light rear-drive 1980s Toyota that became a cult car among racers and drifters.

Toyota president Akio Toyoda apologised to the US Congress in 2010 after mass recalls over which fault?

Unintended acceleration, blamed on trapped floor mats and sticking pedals, led to recalls of about nine million vehicles and, in 2014, a $1.2 billion penalty in the United States.

Toyota's first production base outside Japan was set up in 1958 in which South American country?

Brazil got Toyota's first overseas plant because its government began pushing in 1956 for vehicles to be built locally, so Toyota set up a subsidiary there rather than lose the market.

The 1987 'Toyota War', named for the pickups its troops fought from, saw which country drive Libyan forces from its north?

Chad's troops fought from fast Toyota pickups armed as 'technicals', and their rout of Libya's heavier army gave the last phase of the two countries' war its name.

Toyota's test town, Woven City, broke ground in 2021 at the foot of which mountain?

Mount Fuji rises behind the site at Susono, where Toyota had closed its Higashi-Fuji car plant and broke ground on the experimental town in February 2021; it officially opened in September 2025.

In 2021 Toyota's Woven Planet unit agreed to buy the self-driving division of which ride-hailing firm?

Lyft sold its Level 5 self-driving unit for $550 million, $200 million of it upfront, a deal the ride-hailing firm said would bring forward the day it turned a profit.

Toyota Motor North America is headquartered in which Texas city?

Plano became the base in 2017, when Toyota folded its separate US sales, manufacturing and corporate companies into one; its American sales arm had been in California since 1957.

Toyota Motor Europe is headquartered in which city?

Brussels houses Toyota Motor Europe's head office, with its technical centre nearby at Zaventem, but the racing arm behind Toyota's Le Mans winners works from Cologne in Germany.

In 2004 Toyota showed off a robot that could play which musical instrument?

Trumpet: the 120 cm humanoid played 'When You Wish Upon a Star' at its Tokyo debut, and a whole robot band went on to perform at the 2005 World Expo in Toyota's home prefecture, Aichi.

Which city's NBA arena opened in 2003 under the name Toyota Center?

Houston's Toyota Center opened in October 2003 as home of the NBA's Rockets, built largely with city money while Toyota paid a reported $100 million for the naming rights.