I remember reading the results of a study about the relative fan bases of the various Formula 1 teams…. Ferrari came out as the world’s most popular team, no surprise there at all… and at the bottom with the least number of devoted fans? Toyota. Somehow the company hadn’t managed to create a strong following in the world’s number one form of motorsports.
Now this seems a little out-of-sync with my understanding of true Toyota aficionados… there are many international communities of people who are seriously into their Toyotas, especially those devoted to their AE86s and Supras. These are probably some of the most dedicated, brand loyal car owners anywhere…. It doesn’t seem to me that Toyota has necessarily connected these groups with their modern F1, NASCAR and NHRA programs thought does it?
I suppose this isn’t really a discussion worth having though, as Speedhunters is more focused on the enthusiast side of the Toyota brand anyway…. and I’m happy to announce that February will be entirely devoted to exploring these scenes. For the coming month, we’ll be rounding up as many cool Toyotas, Lexus and Scions that we can coerce in front of our cameras. We’ll also endeavour to give as wide an overview of the various Toyota tuning scenes, styles, subcultures, milestones and motorsports acheivements as possible.
This can be anything from Grip tuned AE86s…..
….to a look at Toyota Team Europe’s recent GT and Prototype exploits…..
Mike Garrett is also planning to return to the Toyota History Garage for a detailed look at the exhibitions on display….
…..We’ll also divide and catalogue the many Toyota-centric Japanese subcultures from VIP Style to Drifting…. February is looking to be an exciting month on Speedhunters.
BTW if you have a Toyota based site or car you think we should look at please drop us a line. Those of you who got in contact for Mazda month really helped us to properly reflect these scenes and we hope again to deepen our Toyota based connections worldwide… BTW it just so happens that we have a bit of a Toyota maniac on the editorial team, Antonio Alvendia, and he is always on the look out for new Toyota friends :>… so don’t be shy and drop us a line!
Righto… here we go…..
:R
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
Toyota Month? I hope so man, my family owns a shitload. Hell i remember this Christmas we had fam over @ my house and i took a pic of hte driveway and street. I didnt realize how many toyotas we actually had. We had
Trecel
Sienna
Supra
Celica
Matrix
Echo
Prius
Camry
Corolla
and a Lexus IS300
There is a website- http://www.mr2oc.com that has the largest mr2 organization that spreads internationally. the person in charge is bill strong, if you want to cover some cool mr2s or look through those photos to post up, look there.
Cool! Should be fun to watch Feb!
I will not be happy unless at least 35% of this months posts are about AE86's. More is better!
hell yes
http://www.mr2only.com is a mr2 dedicated magazine. Might want to drop them a line for features
Lots op toyota sedan's like them mark X and crown! So not only old one's like JZX and JZS.
cant wait for this months....love speedhunters
btw heres the 2 main sites i go on club4ag.com and ectoyotas.com
Finally, Toyota month! I hope to see a lot of AE86 coverage
I wanna see some JZX and JZS
It would be awesome if you all did an article on the early import scene with the celicas, rx-3's, and 510's that started in Southern California. I've never seen anything but a paragraph mentioning some tiny aspect of it. Y'all could knock it out I'm sure!
sweet ! lots of supras please
garagedori.com
Check out http://www.celica-gts.com
Group of Celica enthusiasts on the older RWD Toyotas
Let's see some starlets too.
Would love to see some of the lesser known Toyotas in there (Sera anyone?)
Also: anyone know if there is any reason so many Toyota makes start with 'C' or a soft-c ('S') sound? Celica, Corona, Camry, Crown, Corolla, Cressida, Celsior, Chaser, Starlet, Supra, Sienna, Soarer, Chaser, Seca, Sera, Carina, Cavalier, Corsa, Caldina, Curren, etc. etc. etc. etc....
OOHH WEEEE.
Been waiting for this, make sure to feature the most known sportscar of the Toyota family; Carina II '90,
jzx81/90/100/110 asap
and be mint if you could do some on the older crowns like ms50 utes ,ms51 coupes and ms55
toyota month is going to be soooooooooooo sweeet
YES!!! Please for the love of all things throw in some Soarers!!!
Woot scion!
I might drop you a line about car features. I used to have not only an SW20 MR2 two-tone with a cage coilovers etc, but an LS400 with 19" Work Euroline's, and an ex-Signal Auto AE86 with a custom widebody kit, Work Equips, and a T3/T4 turbo kit. Some might say I like Toyota a little too much....
Alex Kuangs SR-Powered AE86 on http://www.jtuned.com looks nice
Looking forward to seeing some awesome Toyotas!
x2 on Big_Bird's comment!
I cannot wait to see Antonio's post on his favourite AE86 pics. There must be one coming, right?
Don't forget legendary AW11 MR2's !
you have mail!
Some good Supra forums:
http://www.mkiiisupra.net/bbs/index.php
http://www.mkivsupra.net/
PLEASE feature the v12 Top Sectret Supra:
http://www.automill.com/uploads/top-secret-toyota-supra-v12-thumb.jpg
Man, you guys must be psychic! I'm a Toyota lover and Febrary 11th is my B-Day!!
So, it's a damn nice birthday present for me! Bring on those hachi's!
Crestas, Mark II's, Celsiors, Aristos, and Lots of Z30 soarers please.
Toyota should do a modern-day version of the AE86...that would be ever so win.
AE92 Corolla with wagon face look, the best conversion ever!!!
cool site for a guy who converted his corolla to a sprinter look:
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/526284
Can`t wait to see more!!! I hope we will see carparazzi pics of new hachi soon
As always we can help you guys out with AE86 features if you need.
http://www.hachiroku.com.au/blog/
For cool jzx sedan stuff you could check out some of the guys on
http://www.jzxproject.com
a lot of them are making some cool progress with cressida (x chassis). Check it out!
old school, te's ke's.
look north, Canada has some awsome corolla's
Have a look into the toyota starlet from the early KP's to the later EP's very nice little qwik cars, esp the the later EP (with a 1300cc turbo).
I know of a few Toyota's in NZ you might want to feature, I can put you onto the people who own the following vehicles if you wish.
1UZ powered 80's 'lux
1UZ powered Z11 Soarer
Lowwwww MS63 (70's Crown Estate)
Just to name 3 that I think would be relatively diverse entries, there's a million more obviously.
This should be pretty cool.
It's a real shame Toyota stopped making cool cars a while back though.
soarers
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g269/jzkid3/d272324b.jpg
my friend it building a drift one as we speak!
Woo hoo! My one wish is a good story on the Techno Pro Spirits MR-S aka Spririts MR-S.
Check out http://www.spyderchat.com for a great source of MK3 MR2 enthusiasts.
Rod, please post an article, even a small one, on the Toyota Paseo! I would like to see if they actually modify them in Japan (also known as the Cynos).
I own one, my first car. It makes a huge 90horsepower
Toyota month yaaay! ^^
oh goody goody, its Toyota month!
the local drift scene in Malaysia has tons of Toyotas in it, from TE71s to AE86s =D
Take a look at JZXProject.com
It's a site specifically for the X chassis 4 door cars; from X32 all the way up to JZX110 (Chaser, Mark, Cressida, etc). There are lots of great threads on there and some of the builds the guys are doing are amazing. Members are located everywhere in the world, though most seem to be Australia, US, and Canada.
Cressidas have become a great inexpensive alternative for the Toyota fans, as you can find an X83 (89-92) Cressida for less than or around $1k (usually running). 5 speed swaps are cheap and easy, and many shops now stock the necessary parts to drop in the 1JZ which came standard everywhere but the US.
I'm on there with my build also; an X63 based 7MGTE swap. (first of it's kind I believe).
Just a sample of what we got to offer
http://jzxproject.com/bbs/index.php?showtopic=2325
I don't think Speedhunters could cover everything about Toyota in just a month, you guys should give it a 2 month special so you guys could stretch your legs and not have to rush and post everything at once. Well not sure what cars I do want to see the most, but would be cool if you guys cover more vintage cars like the 2000GT or the first gen Celica.
For 1st generation 70's Celicas, try the below sites:
http://www.1stgencelica.com
, contact username: Andy_Vang
http://www.classic-celica.com
, contact username: SuperCelica77
Really nice Celicas that have been featured in the Japanese Magazine, "Lighting: Japanese Old Car Vintage Auto".
it would be cool if you guys included some alltrac/gt fours from alltrac.net
need some toyota rally history!
PLEASE make this happen! Can't leave the camrys! I know its werid but believe me once you see what we can do with a 4 door sedan you will think twice. Check us out, there are 2 late model camrys that are turbo charged laying down 300hp to the wheels!
http://www.toyotanation.com
http://http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showthread.php?t=283108&highlight=gene
if you guys are interested in more pictures let me know. e-mail me @ Toyotasuprarz5150@hotmail.com
keep up the great work!
- samson
Glad you spend some extra attention to Toyota during February! That really makes a toyotaku happy!
You can find the European AE86 community here:
http://www.aeu86.org
We're mainly trying to share knowledge to keep the AE86s on the road, but there are some very interesting cars in Europe including the Cowini's car I posted earlier to Antonio:
http://www.aeu86.org/viewtopic/ex-works-touring-car/t/5416
check http://www.toyotagtturbo.com for starlet centric content.
Would be interesting to see some Toyota rallying..corollas, starlets and celicas have been rallying favourites for ages
hey dude, not too sure if its been posted up but there are a heap of different toyots on http://www.ae86drivingclub.com.au/forums.
There are a large amount of cool AE86's and also alot of cool early 80's era te72, ke70 and ae71 corollas.
Hope its some help, keep up the good work.
i tink dev.speedhunters.com should also touch a bit about other models of toyota.
corolla ae111,ae101,ae92,mr2,mrs,celica...
not only ae86,jzx series,supra...
If you are looking into more articles to write up for your Toyota month, I'd say go to Club4AG.com and look for a group of dedicated AE86 enthusiast that calls themselves "Knuk knuk Garage" These are an elite group of AE86 owners that are sole loyalist of the AE86. You should see there cars. If Hawaii have the coolest, meanest AE86s, you should check out this group. The head honcho of these group is Jr. Asprer. Contact him and he'll be willing to contact the group for an interview and/or to add article to speedhunters.
http://jzxproject.com/bbs/index.php?showtopic=1632&hl=
this gentleman has so many more awesome Toyotas than i have ever seen in one place before, except maybe toyotafest or jccs meetings. but the difference is, this is ONE GUY!
and there's more that isn't even shown in the thread...
If you guys leave out the Cressida, then you guys are smokin some bad crap! X chassis rocks
Cressida
Cresta
Chaser
MarkII
Verosa
Toyota Month!
Kyaaaaaaaaaa!!!!~~
Awesome!
Konnichiwa to all the Toy-heads out there, especially Antonio-san!
Let's not forget the Toyota Owners abd Restorers Club, aka TORC, who has brought you the one and only, original All Toyotafest for the past 13 years (this year marks the 14th and a return to the Queen Mary).
http://www.toyotaclub.org/
And a plug for myself at http://www.toyotageek.com and http://www.xanga.com/toyotageek where I try to bring my own little twist to the world of Toyotaholics, collecting Toyotamobilia, and stories of the cars that everyone seems to forget.
And if you likes Toyopet Crowns, you should get hold of Frenchy Dehoux - he's a one-of-a-kind, walking, talking PR man for that car:
http://frenchysrides.com/1958toyopet.html
bro,great coverage,can u plz do some coverage on JZX90 older brother the JZX81??thanks hehe