An unnamed 28-year-old driver was passing under the limb of a beech tree in the Gokayama area of Toyama Prefecture at the exact moment that the tree decided to call it quits. The driver escaped with minor injuries; which is something of a minor miracle when you see the damage to the passenger compartment in this photo.
What makes it all the more frustrating is that this tree has been identified as a potential hazard, but local historic preservation in the area barred its removal.
You don’t often see Toyota 2000GTs come up for sale. Certainly the most hotly coveted Japanese sportscar, it is also one of the few that, in my opinion, holds the stage with any late 60’s sportscar regardless of country of origin. This example on offer from Symbolic Motors in La Jolla California, is the very first left-hand-drive model to leave the factory. Whether this bit of build history makes her more valuable than the other 39 American market examples believed to still exist, I don’t know. What I do know is that I would have like to have picked this car up when it was advertised in AutoWeek magazine for $27,000 in February of 1987.
Something I’ve never really noticed, that I think this color accentuates, is those little access doors for the battery and filter. Can you imagine these little strictly utilitarian exterior panels being produced today?
I’d be wary to restore this one. It might be one of very few “driver” 2000GTs on the planet. The vast majority that I’ve seen tend to fall into the over-restored trailer queen variety. This example looks like you wouldn’t feel guilty about tearing up the coast for an early morning ride. We often value patina only when there’s a specific race history with the car, saying things like, “that’s the paint that Fangio touched” or some other specific sentiment placed on the original bits. But this is different, it’s more like the beauty of a broken-in leather jacket being better than a new one. There’s value in these things even when they’re not museum pieces.
She’s much prettier in red than I would have thought. You can blame my general distaste for red cars (a color best reserved for Italian machines), but it might also be my great appreciation for their stunning racing livery. More information at Symbolic’s inventory page.
