The original company name was "Toyoda", but it was changed to the similar sounding "Toyota" because, get this, the latter word is spelled with 8 brush strokes. That is considered lucky in Japan.
Other than a few references that Toyota "built trucks" for the Japanese army, all mention of participation in WWII has been sanitized off the Internet.
The first Toyotas in the Americas was some Land Rovers to El Salvador in 1953.
When Japanese factories go on strike, the factory manager is fired. Maybe we can learn something from them after all.
The Toyota factories are the only industrial plants in Japan that were not bombed in the war. The one and only scheduled bombing run was canceled as the B-29s were warming up at the moment the war ended.
Here is the first ever commercial Toyota, the 1937 AA. Two cylinder, three-speed manual, this is a replica. None of the originals exist. To you car buffs, if this reminds you of a 1935 Dodge Power Wagon, well, that's because it basically is.
