Monday, May 16, 2016

Spotted on the streets: Toyota Sports 800 - Classic Japanese sports cars way before JDM was cool


This is a rare car that has been spotted by long time reader Siva Bhakta. It is a Toyota Sports 800 from 1965 or thereabouts. He managed to chat up the owner who also mentioned that there was at least fifteen or so of this car in Malaysia. That is quite a number as according to sources like Wikipedia, 3,131 units were made and about 10% have survived to this day (with most in Japan).


This car is historically important for Toyota. It was actually the company's first production sports car. The car was powered by an 800cc horizontally opposed or boxer two cylinder engine in the nose powering the rear wheels via a four speed manual transmission. It made 45ps and managed to allow this featherweight (580kg unladen) of a car to almost hit 160kmh (158kmh actually) on some race tracks. 

This is pretty amazing stuff actually for something so small and tiny. I don't even know if chubby ol' me can fit in one these days. Maybe I could go in, but not come out. And the car will be slower too. But wow, a flat-two boxer engine! That is unique. You may never get to see such willingness to try small engines like this nowadays. Maybe if fuel prices head north again and everyone wants to downsize even more then we might. But it would be a normal four or three cylinder engine with a cylinder or two lopped off. No boxer nonsense....unless its from Subaru of course.

It looked quite cool too. The front grille and main headlights was actually copied in the larger and beautifully styled Toyota 2000gt from 1967. You see touches of that car in this predecessor. And it was based on something quite pedestrian actually - The Sports 800 was based on the Toyota Publica. This was supposed to be Japan's 'National Car Concept' realised and from this small Toyotas like the Toyota Starlet emerged. But it is this offshoot that actually competed with other small sports cars that came out of Japan in the 1960s - The Honda S500, S600 and beautiful S800 as well as the larger Daihatsu Campagno and Datsun (Nissan) Fairlady 1500. 

Small Japanese sports cars from the 1960s are very cool in some ways. This was way before JDM became a catchphrase. I have personally seen the Sports 800  and the Honda S600 here in Malaysia in the 1970s, 1980s and even in the 1990s. I think it is wonderful that quite a pristine example of this car is alive and kicking here in Malaysia. 

Photo By Alex Brogan - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20222806


No comments: