When most people mention a classic Toyota, something from the Seventies, like the Celica, probably comes to mind. Those with thicker wallets might even think of the fantastic 2000GT. Most of the earliest Toyotas on these shores were a bit more mundane and certainly are less visible today. So let’s check out what has to be one of the bigger caches of vintage Toyotas, all owned by a well-known collector whose family also owns the Toyota dealership where these cars are located. In today’s installment, we’ll have a look at the crown jewels inside the outdoor storage area.
First up is this third-generation Toyota Crown. Made between 1967 and 1971, I’d peg this Crown as either a 1968 or 1969 model. Crowns were available with either four- or six-cylinder power and a various manual or automatic gearboxes. As a bigger car for the North American market, I’d say there is a good chance this one has the 2M six with the automatic. It looks quite solid, and one has to wonder if with some new fluids, a fresh battery and some air in the tires, if it could be driven away.
Sitting next to the Crown is something a little smaller, a Toyota 700. Known as the Publica in some markets, the 700 and the aforementioned Crown were the first Toyotas offered to Canadians, starting in 1965. Advertised then as Canada’s lowest-priced car with an automatic transmission, the standard 700 started at $1,798. The Deluxe model, while still pretty spartan, added such features as a heater. While front-wheel drive was flirted with in the development stages, the 700 stuck with the tried-and-tested front engine/rear-wheel drive layout. The engine is a 697cc air-cooled, two-cylinder engine hooked to a two-speed automatic.
Moving along and further back in time, we come to a very rough shell from what I believe was an early Toyopet/Toyota Crown. The same collection also includes a nicely restored 1960 Toyopet Crown Custom, so this could have been a companion parts car. The first-generation RS series Crown was built from 1955-1962, and featured very rugged construction and four-cylinder power. More suited to Japan’s then undeveloped roads than American style highways, contemporary reviews complained about its lack of sophistication and pace.
Anyone bored of Crowns yet? I hope not, since here are a few more. The white one on the right is another 1968-1969 model. The black one is another third-generation example, this time a face-lifted 1970 or 1971. The bumper is a little crusty, but the rest looks very solid. In the middle of this Crown sandwich is a T40 series Corona, likely of late-1960s vintage. Available only with four-cylinder power, the Corona was a size smaller and a notch downmarket from the Crown.
One last Crown, I swear! The one on the right is a second-generation model that was along with the 700 part of Toyota’s initial Canadian lineup. I don’t know this car’s exact model year, bit it’s likely in the 1965-1967 range. This one has a truck bed liner resting on top, so either it has a leak or has been relegated to storage-shelf status–which would be a shame, given its rarity. While the styling isn’t quite as distinct as the third-generation Crown (the white car next to it), the grille has a bit of a Chrysler vibe to it.
I’ll leave you with one last look at most of the entire row. If you could pick one to adopt, which would it be? Speaking for myself, that red Crown would be an easy first choice.
It is funny, I remember the 1960s Corona quite well, but do not remember the Crown series at all. The Corona (and the concurrent Datsun) marked the beginning of the end of the VW Beetle, while it looks like the Crown would have been about the size of the Valiant/Falcon/Nova. I would imagine that the Crown was quite expensive compared to those 3, and while the Valiant certainly lacked the Toyota’s build quality, it was probably every bit as durable.
I don’t recall seeing a 700 at all. I can’t imagine that they sold many in Canada without heaters. 🙂
You’d be about right on the size. The main difference you’d notice would be width, where Crowns were narrower due to Japanese regulations. Go over 1700mm wide, and your road tax went up exorbitantly. Crowns were extremely popular here in Australia in the sixties when Australian cars started getting bigger. They were seen as a sensible size, nicely luxurious, and could even be had with overdrive.
On the matter of width, I remember reading when Ford tried to sell the mark 3 Cortina in Japan back in the early seventies, they had to specially clamp the body during construction to make it 3mm narrower to fit the rules!
Wow! What a great find! I have never seen so many Crowns in one place. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen so many Crowns period! I have read period Buff Book articles about the Crown, and IIRC they were pretty positive. It’s interesting that the Crown didn’t sell more volume in North America, given that their size and equipment was more in keeping with “Yank” tastes. Like JPC, I wonder if it was a price/value issue relative to the domestic competitors in that size class.
The 700 is a crazy wild find. Other than a picture in a World Cars book, I hardly realized these existed and definitely had no idea that they made it to North America.
I’m with you on the red Crown. It would be awesome to clean that car up and get it back on the road.
Keep in mind that back in the 1960’s, other than the trendy coasts, WWII was only twenty years back, and a lot of WWII vets were the main car buyers at this time. The little matter of Pearl Harbor was still in a lot of these customers minds, and the concept of “Japanese junk” in other products had only been made obsolete in the past ten years. It’s one thing to pay a couple hundred for a Japanese motorcycle and hope that it was well made (not all of them were – Honda was your only safe buy at the time). Paying ten times that for a Japanese car was a bit of a leap of faith, which is why the little stuff sold well, but the big stuff not so much.
And people still believed in Detroit at that time.
Excellent point!
Syke you speak the truth. Most Americans did not think highly of Japanese made things until the late 1960’s
In Back to the Future III Doc and marty have this exchange in 1955
Young Doc: No wonder this circuit failed. It says “Made in Japan”.
Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Young Doc: Unbelievable.
The younger folks growing up in 1980’s America had a positive thought over Japan made goods
In the early sixties, my older brother passed on a story that in which a city in Japan was renamed “Usa” so that the products made there could be labeled “Made in Usa”. Obviously not true, but it did reflect the common sentiment at the time as Japan being a source of cheap knock-off stuff.
In ’72 Dad offered to help me with the down and co-sign the note on a new car, but not on the Corolla SR5 I wanted. I got a Pinto instead.
I believe the 700 was only sold in Canada and only for a few years. Like a Honda S600 occasionally one will show up for sale but either in perfect or dire project condition never in between.
In western PA if you were talking early Toyota, you were talking the T40 Corona. I don’t think anybody had picked up a dealership earlier than that, unless somebody was real venturesome in Pittsburgh. Remember, we’re talking western PA steel towns and a lot of vets from WWII working in them. Japanese cars weren’t exactly welcome at that time. Neither were German, for that matter, unless it was a Beetle (which we somehow forgot was German).
Now, a request: If we can dig this far back, how about another ten years and back to the Toyopets? It’d go a long way to make up for all those stinking, boring Camry’s.
The dulled reddish Crown catches my eye. Like many of the best Japanese designs of this period, it has an understated Britishness that makes it look like it should be driven (elegantly, of course) by a foreign diplomat.
The fourth picture down, of the Toyopet with the shiny bumper on the ground in front of (or behind) it, cracks me up… sure, just bolt that bumper on and she should be all ready to go.
I like the black Crown, it looks like something a bad guy would drive, maybe a mid level Yakuza enforcer….on an early Hawaii Five-O episode.
There used to be one of those Coronas sitting in an apartment complex parking lot for years and years, it had a Toyo-Glide and a radio delete plate still in place. Then one day it was gone, I never saw it run under its own power, but it would move to different parking spaces from time to time, I never knew who owned it.
+1 on the black Yakuza-esque one.
Terrific finds. I’ve longed to find a Crown for years now. They were pretty common in LA, and for quite a while. I remember seeing one or two in Iowa City too, which was a hothouse of early Toyota love in the early seventies, due to it being a university town and a former Studebaker dealer who was very happy to supply them.
I’m very fond of that generation Crown, have ridden in them (the wagon too). They were surprisingly handsome and exuded quality. The prior generation (as also pictured), could bee seen in LA still too, but not nearly as often.
I’ve never seen a 700 in this country anywhere; I didn’t know they were ever imported.
Great collection. The only hing missing is the very strange looking Crown that replaced the red one; it was so far-out 70s Japanese, and folks just wouldn’t touch it. That killed the Crown in the NA market.
The funky 70’s vintage Crown had a hardtop coupe available, which was very “Japanese Cutlass/Torino”, for the US market at least, which I don’t think the previous versions had. I’ve never seen a Crown in person.
There is a hardtop coupe here in town. I haven’t seen it for a while but it is missing a little bit of chrome on the hood making it looking a little more odd.
Like this one, in 70’s green….of course…..
Looks like a Mazda RX-4 on crack.
Damn does that thing have a Mopar vibe going or what?
1967-69 Barracuda hatchback ALL the way. lol
That Crown coupe was Toyota’s answer to the 2nd gen 1967-69 Plymouth Barracuda hatchback.
That weird looking, upside down kinda hood is definitely part of the 70’s “funkiness design”… kinda like the 1977-79 Le Baron’s stupid upside down turn signals atop the headlights styling.
Ewwwwww.
Not bad looking to my 21st-century eyes. That slot above the grille reminds me of a ’61 Chevy.
I’d drive that Crown. I like the mini-mopar look
Mmmm, I love those 70s Crowns – but only the pre-facelift one with the body-colour bumper. When they chickened out and popped a normal chrome one on it the looks were ruined for me! The coupes look fantastic too – although the wagons looked a little odd from some angles.
Ditto!
I remember the Crown [the orginal Avalon] like the light blue one, at an early 70’s Auto Show. It looks like a shrunken Fuselage Chrysler Newport.
And, compact Coronas/Corollas were easy sell to college age Boomers. But their parents were not ready for ‘furrin’ cars yet.
The Crown is NOT a descendant of the Avalon, the Cressida was… which was called the Mark II/Cresta/Chaser in Japan. The Cresta and Chaser were very similar with a few styling differences… but ALL shared the same platform.
The Crown was sold alongside the Cressida(not the US) around the world.
The Crown was Toyota’s full-size car, while the Cressida was the mid-size offering.
The Avalon replaced the Cressida(STUPID move) in 1993.
The Avalon was one of Toyota’s moves towards “appliancehood”, and away from making sporty cars and RWD sedans.
That “very rough shell” surely looks like it has a 1952-53 Ford rear bumper.
My father-in-law bought a 1966 light blue Crown sedan with automatic for his youngest daughter. It had a beautiful cast aluminum cam cover iirc, but was a stone and needed lots of work. She didn’t have it for long.
In California, things started out with the Toyopet Crown, the Toyopet Tiara, the Corona, Crowns (but only in six cylinder form), Land Cruisers, Stout pickups . . . I’m talking 1957-1967. Never had the Publica in America. . . .
There is a twist . . . . The Toyota distributors in Hawaii and Guam were (and still are) SERVCO Pacific and Atkins-Kroll. As a result, some Toyota models in the 60’s showed up in both places in variants you never saw in North America. There were Corona pickups and Corona two-door station wagons (the latter more commonly seen in the day and I remember a ’67 wagon at the place I worked at in Wahiawa ca. 1980-82; stick on the tree). Of course, these early models disintegrated from the top down and required a lot of TLC and rustproofing which delayed the inevitable.
Interesting collection, I used to regularly see Crowns like these including the odd ute which I think had a column shift (inc manual trans) and bench seat, but in the last 10 years the phasing out of lead-replacement petrol means that a conscious effort is needed to keep an alloy-head classic on the road.
Old engines run fine on unleaded gas Those crownutes were quite good BOF construction and most were repowered with Holden 6s
Amazing finds David! I love Toyota Crowns, they are so cool and so scarce these days. Too bad there wasn’t a gen-4 hardtop coupe!
Just got a Toyota Crown 2002 Super Deluxe model. It’s like a Japanese or Hong Kong taxi, with a square roof. Incredible room inside, nice suspension and seats (and modern A/C, I live in SE Asia so it’s kinda vital). It’s the direct descendant of the ur-Crowns of the 50s. RWD, 2-litre L4, leaf springs, live axle. These cars are *dirt cheap* (especially a 5+year-old one) but rugged as heck, built to last and easy to repair. They still make these, it’s Toyota’s most weirdly conservative car along with the Century… wish I could have afforded one of those!