THE OLDEST KNOWN TOYOTA.

[dinger]

This months Motorsport magazine, cover date Jan 2013, has an interesting article entitled "Restore, revive, recreate". It covers the topic of originality against restoring, or even in the case of very rare vehicles, recreating them from parts.

It also tells us that the only known pre war Toyota, a 1936 AA model is in the Louwman Museum at the Hague in Holland. They imported it a few years ago from rural Russia where it had been used on a farm.

However in line with their general policy museum owner Evert Louwman says he will keep it as found, in original, but rather poor condition. You can link to the museum and see detail of the AA and other Toyotas in the museum, via Google.

[oldredcelicabryan]

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/1936_Toyota_Model_AA.jpg

[ifc63]

Peter Hunter touched on this subject in the Winter 2012 TEC Topics.
Here is what he wrote:
"There are no known surviving examples of the AA model and when the Toyota Museum was established in 1988 a replica was specially built using photographs and a few remaining drawings. However, you may remember that we reported in early 2010 that what were claimed to be two different original Toyota AAs had been found in remote parts of Russia. Both had suffered various modifications and were incomplete and there were numerous differences from the known specification of the original, so there was/is considerable doubt as to their authenticity. One now resides in the Louwman Motor Muuseum in Holland and the other appears to remain in Russia, but it is significant that Toyota in Japan has not declared them to be genuine AAs and has not seen fit to acquire one of them for their museum."

Also been discussed on various sites:
japanesenostalgiccar.com/2010/07/08/russian-toyota-aa-surfaces-in-the-netherlands/

Very interesting video but I couldn't make out a word he was saying !!


It got a mention also when Jay Leno got to drive the Toyota AA replica:


Also apparently another replica in Japan:

Regards, Ian.

[harvey]

Interesting links, about the AA, if toyota can replicate an AA from pics then I hope they might do the same and replicate some hard to get panels like celica TA22 wings ;D ;D ;D ;D