About a hundred miles north of Tokyo, there's a large industrial complex situated on the outskirts of Gunma.
This isn't a place where tourists come - there's nothing here but gas stations and houses with tiled roofs and hulking factories dotted through on the landscape. The signs give no clue as to what's being made inside, just indecipherable company names printed out in English and Kanji. I'm at the gates of one particularly large campus, listening to my interpreter make a call on his cellphone. A couple of elderly security guards are watching us with detached bemusement. My guide, a friend who has lived and worked in Japan for the past few years, speaks a few more words then hangs up.
"He's coming out," he says, "He'll be in a black Lexus."
Next thing, we're in an industrial elevator, inching upwards to the second floor of a massive factory. Below, enormous CNC machines and laser welders cut, boom, perforate, and drill, crafting titanium-hulled monstrosities intended to harvest the power of the tides and turn them into electricity. Above, it's automotive heaven.
This is the story of the first Japanese supercar, a demarcation point between econoboxes and something else. The impact of this car - imagine if Hyundai, in 1986, had suddenly parked an Aston Martin DB9 next to the Pony in their showrooms. It came seemingly out of nowhere and paved the way for cars like the 240Z, the Mazda RX-7, and the Toyota Supra. It was a Bond car, a racing thoroughbred, and it remains the most expensive Japanese collectible classic, each survivor of the 351 original examples worth well above a million dollars today.
Here, in a vaulted room above a factory floor, there are 13 of them.
Our man of mystery, one Takeshi Moroi, is a member of the Toyota 2000GT owners' club of Japan. Five of the cars here today are his, while others belong to fellow members who've sent them here for work. Some of that work is restoration, the rest is some eyebrow-raising modification. Moroi himself has cars he keeps for collector status and others that he's outfitted for vintage competition.
The wildest of these wears the racing livery of Carroll Shelby, and is fitted with a hybridized engine made of mating a Supra straight-six to the original Yamaha heads. It has the front brakes from a Ferrari F355, the rear brakes from a Nissan Skyline GT-R, a fully worked up racing suspension with coilovers, custom-made alloy wheels, and a host of chassis bracing. It's a beast, yet simultaneously a beauty.
As is common with the more iconic cars of history, the Toyota 2000GT came about as something of an accident. Originally, the prototype model was intended as a two-seater rival to the E-type, to be produced for Nissan as the replacement for their Fairlady roadster. The prototype car, revealed at the 1965 Tokyo Motor Show, was conceived of and built by Yamaha. You probably know Yamaha best as a motorcycle manufacturer, or as one of the better-known Japanese piano and musical instrument manufacturers, but the company has a long automotive history, which mostly begins here. Yamaha's speciality, honed via the demands of creating precision musical instruments, was metallurgy. The 2000GT's 2.0-litre straight-six was a jewel of a thing, carefully crafted and just as rev-happy as the best Europe could produce.
At the time, the contemporary Porsche 911S made 160 horsepower from its flat-six; the 2000GT was right there with 150 h.p. from its straight-six, and more to those who cared to tune it. However, Nissan passed on the project, electing to take their own route - one that would lead to the 240Z a half-decade later. Yamaha floated their concept past Toyota, who leapt at the chance to cast a halo on their brand. As you'd mostly find today, Toyota in the mid-1960s was very much a manufacturer of consumer-oriented people movers, and the 2000GT presented an injection of excitement.
In looks, it was Japan's E-type; in cost, it was more like a Japanese Ferrari. About 15 per cent more expensive than the Jaguar or Porsche, the 2000GT was a true exotic, and this landed it a role in the Bond film You Only Live Twice. The Bond car is actually the much rarer convertible version, of which there were just two made, allegedly because Sean Connery couldn't quite fit in the coupe.
From the silver screen to the racing circuit, the 2000GT wasn't just go-fast looks. After setting several International Automobile Association endurance records, Toyota handed a brace of 2000GTs to Carroll Shelby, who prepped them for Sports Car Club of America competition. In the 1968 season, drivers Scooter Patrick and Davey Jordan took the cars to second and third place in the SCCA national production championships. There's some indication that they would have spanked the Porsche competition too, were it not for a ruling on carburetors that forced a change to a Solex setup that hamstrung the competition-spec 2000GT by 10 h.p. or so. By any standard, two-thirds of the podium for a neophyte racing entry would have been a success for many companies. For Toyota, a loss was a loss, and that was the end of the 2000GT racing program. The cars were retired, with one shipped back to Japan and converted into a replica of the original endurance record car (which had subsequently been crashed and destroyed).
It's hard to say how many of the original 351 cars produced now still exist. On one hand, despite their high initial cost, few 2000GTs survived over the years, and the recent huge spike in prices is a relatively new phenomenon. On the other hand, once a car's value pushes past a million dollars, rescuing a complete wreck from a barn becomes worth it. Rough examples that might have languished unloved are now becoming investment opportunities.
However, to my new friend Takeshi-san, the 2000GT is something else. All his cars - and he owns a couple of Ford GT40s, a Porsche 962, and multiple other racing machines - are intended to be driven. His 2000GTs aren't locked away up here above the factory he owns, they come out to circle Mount Fuji, to run to redline amongst the mountain passes as they once did.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and automotive enthusiast. If you have a suggestion for a column, or would be interested in having your car club featured, please contact him at [email protected]. Follow Brendan on Twitter: @brendan_mcaleer.
