Dreams and Madness: How the 2000GT and LFA Give Toyota Its Soul

From Road & Track

"Initially, I thought of the 2000GT as a mythical car, but over the years my view has changed. Everybody has a dream car, and companies can have dream cars too. The 2000GT was Toyota's dream."

A swelling wave of red sits beneath cherry blossoms in an empty parking lot, its sleek, aluminum-skinned body curved like a master calligrapher's brush-stroke. It is impossibly low at 45.7 inches in height, the long, louvered hood stretching out like a contemporary Italian Gran Turismo. Just 351 Toyota 2000GTs were made, and this one rates as ever rarer being one of the 15 percent made in left-hand drive for the US market.

It belongs to Christian Chia, president and CEO of the Open Road group in Vancouver BC. Born in Holland, raised in Jakarta, and educated in British Columbia, Chia's first car was an 1986 Corolla GT-S – a hachi-roku. These days he oversees dealerships ranging from Rolls-Royce to Mazda, races in the IMSA-sanctioned Porsche GT3 Cup Canada, and this morning he has parked his personal Lexus LFA next to Japan's first supercar. There are forty years between the beauty and the banshee, and perhaps another forty to come before we see anything like either one again.

To put the 2000GT quickly in context, Japan in the mid-1960s was as parts of China are today, a source of inexpensive consumer goods. Remember the 1955 version of Doc Brown scoffing, "No wonder this circuit failed; it says 'Made in Japan'." Toyotas of the time were cheap, unremarkable, and disposable. When the 2000GT took to the stage at the 1965 Tokyo Motor Show, it was expensive, startlingly beautiful, and this example is now worth as much or more than a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing.

And yet, it is also a Toyota, which means that the 2.0L straight-six fires right up on first twist of the key. Settled in to an impossibly tight cabin, there's a mild intimidation factor from the value of the car, but Chia seems more than cheerful to see his treasure out on the road. We stop in the aforementioned empty parking lot for a few photos; he fields an unending stream of work emails on his phone while I gawp at Satoru Nozaki's handiwork.

If the 2000GT raised eyebrows then, it drops jaws today. Yes, there's the endurance racing records to be championed, the Carroll Shelby SCCA racing history, the open-topped version with Connery's Bond at the wheel. But set aside the legends surrounding this car and just look at it. In a world where the closest we come to sensuousness is the programmed snarl of an F-type, the 2000GT is goddamned beautiful.

It also goes pretty well too. I've driven a distant cousin of this butter-smooth straight-six in a 1960s Toyota Crown wagon before, and with a Yamaha-designed twin-cam head on its shoulders, it's got endless charm and a lovely tenor. It makes 150hp, the sumptuous alloy body weighs just 2400lbs, and the weight distribution is a near-perfect 49/51. The headroom is ridiculous – I'm 5'11" and couldn't fit in here without a fresh haircut – but everything else is perfect. It's like Singer started restoring 240Zs. (Side note: they should totally do that.)

The 2000GT was Japan's first great car, and almost every great Toyota since has had a touch of Yamaha about it. The metallurgical knowledge gained from more than a century of making pianos helped Yamaha understand strength and flow. They made the heads that went on the 4AGE found in the MR2 and Chia's Corolla GT-S. Turbocharged Celica rally cars spat gravel thanks to Yamaha know-how. But of all the pitch-perfect pianofortes or brass instruments the company has produced over the years, nothing compares to the music that emanates from trio of exhaust pipes at the back of a Lexus LFA.

Driving the 2000GT was a privilege that left me feeling a debt of gratitude towards its owner. Five minutes of Lexus V10 fury and I'm thinking about stabbing him, stealing the keys, and going on the lam.

"It's a momentary lapse of sanity," Chia laughs, "The kind of thing that happens so seldom in a large company. Such small production run, with a ten year development cycle. They lost millions, if not hundreds of millions."

Toyota didn't lose the money. They spent it. They spent it on an insane wedge of a supercar that howls so loud it makes every Corolla in a five mile radius burst a coolant hose and start wetting itself. Chia stomps the throttle on startup and scares the crap out of a young woman taking delivery of an RX crossover.

"Oops, sorry," he says, waving an apology. She immediately wants her picture taken with the car.

There is no comparison strong enough to make as that jewel-like 4.8L V10 whaps towards a 9000rpm redline in six tenths of a second. The LFA sounds like ten thousand Wagenerian Valkyries descending on the plain of battle. It sounds like a Velociraptor getting a root canal. It sounds like it's designed to shatter wine glasses on the moon.

Of course, it's also very fast. The V10 cranks out around 560hp, the six-speed automated manual thunks between gears with considerable speed and the subtlety of an old GT3 car, and the whole thing's made of delicately-woven carbonfibre. It runs to 60mph in 3.5 seconds, through the quarter-mile in the high 11 second range, and if you drive one for more than four hours you should probably consult a physician.

It's madness, particularly coming from Lexus, famous for a relentless pursuit of characterless perfection. However, if you think of the blade-sharp focus of the takumi who beat every last impurity out of the LS400, how unsurprising that they can hone a razor's edge on the weapon they were given to engineer.

The crimson dream and the matte-wrapped March hare sit side-by-side. Toyota gets a lot of stick for the vanilla appliances it produces, safe and sane and easy. But like everyone else with a day job, an accountant to answer to, and responsibilities stacked high, it yearns to break free. When it does, the result hits you like a fist to the jaw. We'll be waiting a while for the next uppercut. Based on the evidence, it'll be worth it.