1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive Toyota's first Toyopet Crown, the company's flagship, launched with great fanfare in the home market on January 1, 1955. A large, deluxe sedan, the Crown was the pride of Toyota, "a new, high-performance model that far exceeded the standards of previous domestic passenger cars," according to a book Toyota published on its 50th anniversary in 1987. Indeed, with its downsized American styling and a wraparound rear window, the Crown also seemed perfect for Eisenhower-era America, where European automakers struggling to rebuild after World War II were making their fortunes with volumes that hardly made a difference to Detroit's Big Three. And so Toyota brought the Toyopet Crown to the United States.
1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive
 |
| 1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive |
 |
| 1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive |
 |
| 1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-And-1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-02 |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-side-view |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-front-three-quarters |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-side-view |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-back-seats |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-badge-02 |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-buttons |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-engine |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-glove-box |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-headlight |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-rear-badge |
 |
| 1961-Toyopet-Crown-Custom-steering-wheel |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-back-seats |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-back-seats |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-deluxe-badge |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-engine |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-head-light |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-radio |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-rear-badge |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-side-badge |
 |
| 1967-Toyota-Corona-1900-wheel |
1961 Toyopet Crown Custom And 1967 Toyota Corona 1900 Classic Drive
It bombed. In fact, had Toyota not built a savior eight years later, the company might have disappeared from the U.S. market for good. Prior to World War II, as a means to bolster its industrial base, the Japanese government encouraged companies such as the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works to get into automotive production. Seeking inspiration -- after all, yarn and cars don't exactly have a lot in common -- Kiichiro Toyoda, scion of the company's founder, ordered his young engineers to tear apart a 1933 Chevrolet. When the Toyoda family founded the Toyota Motor Company in 1937 (the revised spelling was far simpler in Japanese), its first car, the Model AA, naturally had much in common with current Chevys and Fords, though it looked like a downsized Chrysler Airflow.
After Emperor Hirohito surrendered in 1945, Toyota Motor also began producing trucks and buses. Postwar Japanese industrial output was one-tenth its prewar level, while "almost all important business leaders were purged," says the Toyota anniversary book. "The postwar Japanese economy had to start from zero." British Major Ivan Hirst saved Volkswagen. The Marshall Plan saved Europe's economy. And the U.S. provided Japan with $2.5 billion in foreign aid to kick-start its economy. Toyota launched its SA compact for the home market in 1947, and in 1948, the Japanese government initiated a five-year plan to get total vehicle production, including Toyota, Nissan, and Isuzu, to 120,000 a year. After the Korean conflict broke out in June 1950, U.S. military demand for Japanese supplies -- mostly textiles and metals -- helped spur the country's economic recovery. By the mid-'50s, Japan was booming. As the Suez Canal Crisis put some urgency on better fuel efficiency -- and sparked a worldwide recession -- Toyota figured the time was right for a move to America. On October 31, 1957, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.
opened in an ex-Rambler dealership in Hollywood. Actual sales commenced in 1958. The Toyopet Crown was first. At 173.6 inches long on a 99.6-inch wheelbase, the Crown was almost 5 inches shorter overall than a 1958 Rambler American six and rode on a 0.4-inch-shorter wheelbase. It had a 1453cc (88.7-cubic-inch), Type R inline-four and a three-speed, column-mounted manual, control-arm independent front suspension, and live-axle three-ply leaf-sprung rear. The Toyopet Crown Deluxe we tested for the October 1958 issue of Motor Trend listed for $2356, including a $94 AM radio and $75 whitewall tires. Its base price of $2187 port of entry, including heater and undersealing, was $32 higher than Chevy's most basic four-door, six-cylinder sedan, the Del Ray, and $10 more than the Rambler Rebel V-8 four-door sedan. The base Toyopet Crown listed for a few hundred dollars less.
"Sound and sensible," we called the Crown in that issue, "one of the sturdiest small imports ever to fall into the hands of Motor Trend's test staff." At 2700 pounds, it also was one of the heaviest. "The Toyopet is so rigid that jacking up one wheel at the rear bumper quickly lifted the other rear wheel." With a full front bench, the Toyopet will carry six people in comfort, we said, with effective drum brakes, slow steering ("about five turns lock to lock"), and a soft, cushy, Detroit-like ride. We reported an overall average of 23.5 mpg for 407 miles of city and highway driving, while Hearst newspaper Chicago's American recorded 34.6 mpg after a 12-hour nonstop drive within Chicago city limits, including rush hour in the Loop. Americans were not amused. Two-third-scale Detroit sedan or not, the 88.7-cubic-inch OHV four had just 60 hp to push around 1.35 tons. There was no automatic transmission option. In its first full year, Toyota U.S. sold just 287 Toyopet Crowns. Total. Oh, and one Landcruiser (later Land Cruiser). It was a bleak debut, indeed. "The Crown, especially the earliest version, was too 'American' and too conventional for people in the foreign car market then dominated by VW, Renault, and the Brits," says Grand Venusian Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics, guest judge for Motor Trend's 2013 Car of the Year and one-time Crown driver. "It was too small and too primitive for people looking at entry-level domestics. Plus it was 'Made in Japan,' a phrase that had serious negative connotations at the time." For 1959, the base Toyopet Crown started at $1989, and the Crown Deluxe got a price boost to $2329 POE. Sales more than tripled to 967 units, but it was still a dismal showing.
New York auto show literature in April 1960 lists a Crown Custom family sedan and a slightly longer Custom station wagon ($2111 for the two-door, $2211 for the four-door) available from Toyopet. Even with the added body styles, though, sales fell to 659 Crowns for 1960, the model year marking the onslaught of Detroit's Big Three compacts. The 1960 Ford Falcon (435,676 produced, sold mostly in the U.S.), Chevrolet Corvair (250,000 sold), and Plymouth Valiant (193,292 built) "made the neither fish-nor-fowl Crown look more out of place," Hall says. Big Three compacts introduced for 1960 and '61 "killed off all but the sports cars and hardiest imported sedans in the early '60s" according to a two-part import report, "Detroit's Economy Car Gap," in the March and April 1967 issues of Motor Trend. Yet Toyota soldiered on. Toyota unveiled its new, smaller Toyopet Tiara in the U.S., with the Crown's 1.5-liter, 60-hp engine, so the Crown was upgraded to a new, 1.9-liter OHV four, rated 90 hp. The '61 Crown was available only in Custom trim, $1795 for the four-door sedan and $2080 for the four-door wagon (no more two-doors). Toyopet sold 225 Crowns that year and 74 in 1962, no doubt all leftovers. Then an all-new Toyota Crown launched for 1963, dropping the Toyopet name. It was longer, lower, and wider with new single-overhead cam inline-sixes added to the overhead-valve-four in the engine lineup, plus a Chevrolet Powerglide-based two-speed automatic, called Toyoglide. Sales inched up to 1096 Toyotas (all models) in the States in '63, then 2909 in '64. By that time, Toyota was working on a new Tiara replacement, designed specifically for the U.S. market. It turned out to be the car that saved the company here. The 1966 Toyota -- not Toyopet -- Corona had clean, spare styling with tasteful chrome highlights, a shovel-grille nose housing quad headlamps, and a modern Italianate rear deck and window. A two-door hardtop version could almost be described as sporty-looking. With the same 115.8-cubic-inch OHV-four as in the '61 Toyopet Crown, it was the largest engine offering among the 10 cars in our two-part review that included everything from the Beetle to the Renault R-10 to the Opel Rallye Kadett. "Larger displacement is the simplest, most conservative approach to finding the power and torque needed for an automatic, and the Toyota was exceptionally smooth and quiet," we said in April '67. "It started easily and never balked, even when the engine was cold."
