Yahoo Autos Tiny Toyota Sports 800 Roadster Is Today's Bring a Trailer Find
Toyota's first sports car is something you've maybe never even heard of.
Sold only in the Japan home market, the Sports 800 has a tiny two-cylinder engine and is a rare sight for most Americans.
With aluminum body panels and a targa top, it's full of aircraft-inspired design.
The Toyota 2000GT is both a beautifully elegant sports car and a milestone vehicle for the Japanese auto industry. It'd be wonderful to own one—but unfortunately, that would set you back nearly a million dollars these days. Instead, what about a feisty little targa-top roadster that was actually Toyota's first production sports car?
This 1966 Toyota Sports 800, currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos), is the grandfather of every sporty Toyota from the Supra to the GR86. It's tiny and powered by a hummingbird-sized 790-cc flat-twin engine, but it has outsize significance as the first sporting Toyota. Furthermore, the Sports 800 is crammed with wonderful little design features—those glassed-in headlights, for instance, are the precursors to the ones found on the 2000GT.
When the Sports 800 was first thought up, in the early 1960s, Toyota was very much a manufacturer of plain but dependable fare. That's what the company built its lasting reputation on. However, chief engineer Tatsuo Hasegawa, a former aircraft engineer, insisted that something with a bit more personality was required.
He and his team took the Toyota Publica, a fuel-sipping runabout that was a sort of proto-Corolla, and applied a host of aircraft-style tweaks. The prototype concept, dubbed the Publica Sports, even had a sliding canopy as you might find on a small single-engine low-wing plane today. That feature did not make the production model.
However, the Sports 800 did come with a lift-off targa roof, a year before you could buy a Porsche with one. Further, that roof panel, the hood, and the rear deck were all made of aluminum, saving weight. Tipping the scales at just 1280 pounds, the Sports 800 was lightweight fun.
The aforementioned 790-cc engine breathes through twin carburetors and produces 44 horsepower. With such a feathery curb weight and a four-speed manual, it's plenty quick, if not exactly the orange Supra Twin-Turbo from the Fast and Furious movies.
This example is finished in classic sports car red on black and is located in Tennessee, home of the Lane Motor Museum. Like the automotive oddballs housed there, this Toyota is delightfully quirky fun.
Head on over to Bring a Trailer for your chance to bid on an important part of Japanese automotive history that's a bargain when compared to the more obvious choices.
The auction ends July 8.
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