These Are the 15 Greatest Toyotas Ever Built

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The storied rise of Toyota Motor Corporation from a maker of automatic textile looms to the largest and most profitable automaker in the world has been well documented. With hundreds of millions of durable, reliable workaday cars and trucks produced over a span of almost 80 years, distilling the 15 greatest ’Yotas of all time should be child’s play, right? So we thought. If you skipped this introduction to first scan our list, perhaps you have a few suggestions of your own. Keep in mind that this is a list based on vehicles sold in the United States. There have been memorable Toyotas proffered elsewhere, but these are the Toyotas that had the greatest impact here in America. Toyota’s luxury division had a strong reputation for quality and high-value luxury cars. Then the RX300 came along and gave it sales to match. Before the RX300, the basic mid-size-SUV formula involved grafting a wagon body onto a pickup-truck frame. The RX300 (and the ill-fated Pontiac Aztek) pioneered the move of SUVs to passenger-car platforms. The formula proved so successful—for Lexus, not Pontiac—that the RX300 at one time represented more than 40 percent of Lexus sales. It was the beginning of the brand’s domination of the mid-size luxury-crossover segment. After diddling around with the T100, an almost-full-size pickup that was bigger than the mid-size Tacoma but smaller than the Ford F-series, Chevy Silverado, and Dodge Ram, Toyota finally took on the Americans with the Tundra, its first full-size truck. Challenging the Americans in the highest-profit, highest-volume segment they still dominate was a daring move, and it’s still an experiment that’s waiting to pay off. Toyota entered NASCAR’s premiere series in 2007. But it wasn’t until March 9, 2008 (the fourth race of the season), when Kyle Busch drove the Joe Gibbs Racing Camry “Car of Tomorrow” to victory in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway that the company scored its first win. NASCAR = America and Toyota = NASCAR . . . you do the math. The rear-drive Corolla Sport’s drivetrain was repurposed to sporty effect in this mid-engine two-seat box. The first-generation MR2 remains one of the most lovable and rewarding-to-drive cars of the 1980s. With a fully independent suspension, a lusty 2.8-liter DOHC inline-six in its nose, the best seats available at any price, and wide fender flares over wide 14-inch wheels, this was the first Supra that was easy to appreciate. A tap-in for our first-ever 10Best list in 1983, it’s still gorgeous today. This was an overwhelmingly simple and lightweight car packing a 112-hp DOHC 16-valve inline-four in an aerodynamic body. But it has grown into a legend—the mighty AE86—thanks to Initial D and the development of drifting. Yes, Corolla is the bestselling car nameplate of all time. But this is the one Corolla worth loving. Toyota aims to build the best car in the world and winds up with this $ 375,000 carbon-fiber flying wedge with a 4.8-liter V-10 featuring 72-degrees between its cylinder banks, a 9000-rpm redline, a 9500-rpm fuel cutoff, and 553-horsepower at a screaming 8700 rpm. It was ridiculous in all the best possible ways. Toyota had pretty much sent only ordinary and utilitarian machinery to America before the Celica. But by applying Ford’s Mustang design formula to the pedestrian mechanical bits of the Carina (sold here only briefly in the early 1970s), Toyota created an instant hit. This was the first indication that Toyota had real ambitions to be more than a maker of commodity cars. This premium luxury sedan simply rocked the world when it inaugurated the Lexus luxury brand. Assembled with the build quality of a Mercedes-Benz, finished better than a Rolls-Royce, and powered by an utterly silent 250-hp, 4.0-liter DOHC 32-valve V-8, it carried an absurdly low $ 35,000 base price. Toyota was obviously aiming at world domination, and the LS400 was a shot over the bow of well-established luxury automakers such as BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Jaguar. A missile cleverly disguised as a missile, the fourth-generation Toyota Supra—particularly in 320-hp, twin- sequential-turbocharged form—may well be the most accessible supercar ever. Although it developed a mighty reputation during a production run that lasted through 2002 (it was withdrawn from the U.S. after 1998), its true heroism became apparent only when owners began applying more boost and more aftermarket gadgetry to the 3.0-liter DOHC 24-valve iron-block straight-six. Yeah, 400 horsepower was easy, and 500 was there without even turning a page in the HKS catalog. But then things got nuttier and nuttier as claimed outputs swelled into the four-digit range. This is the car that made Vin Diesel–grade insanity part of the Toyota tradition. Toyota was a marginal player in the American market until the Corona arrived and established it as a maker of rugged and reliable family transportation. With its distinctive wedge nose and bolt-upright greenhouse, the T40- and T50-series Coronas became the first cars Americans could instantly identify as Toyotas. That Toyota survived long enough to thrive in America is all due to this car. Delicate, beautiful, powered by a jewel of a six-cylinder engine, and featured in a James Bond movie, the 2000GT sports car is the first true Japanese classic and the car most people default to calling Toyota’s best. But great as it undeniably is, there were only 351 (or perhaps 337) made between 1967 and 1970 and it was Yamaha that assembled them. The Land Cruiser is the beast that has carried every burden thrown atop it in every corner of the earth. And the Cruiser that’s worth remembering is the FJ40 that appeared first in 1960. Larger and more robust than previous versions of the Cruiser, the FJ40 was plain tough. It wasn’t sophisticated or luxurious, and it was pretty agricultural in operation. But that’s exactly what it needed to be. The FJ40 continued almost unchanged for more than 20 years, a tribute to its brutishly effective design. In 1983, the last new one was sold in the United States, while the last one rolled off the line in Japan in 1984—a full 24 years after it was introduced. Whether you call it Hilux or “Pickup” or Tacoma, the compact Toyota truck is the heart and soul of the brand. It’s the Toyota you’ll see everyplace on the planet—sometimes with machine guns or anti-aircraft rockets mounted in the bed. The first Toyota pickup sold in America was the 1964 Stout powered by an 85-hp 1.9-liter four-cylinder. Square-rigged and tough, it has set a standard that Toyota has assiduously kept for half a century. Everyone has owned a compact Toyota pickup—or at least everyone knows somebody who has owned one—and it’s likely that several more yet-to-be-born generations will, as well. It’s not the first Camry or the first one assembled in America, but it’s the first truly American Camry. Built like an anvil with limousine-style doors, featuring an interior more comfortable than most Hiltons, and looking like a scaled-down Lexus LS, this generation of Camry is everything any American has ever wanted in a Toyota. It’s not exciting or flashy, it’s just a brilliantly conceived and executed appliance. Of course the 1992 Camry is the greatest Toyota of all time. Designed with the American market in mind, the XV10 Camry was wider than Toyotas built to Japanese tax laws. And it was that accommodation to American sensibilities that immediately had this Camry tearing up the sales charts. Subsequent Camrys are regularly among the very bestselling cars in America ever since. Toyota has made some great sports cars, played around and won some races, and its trucks have earned mighty reputations for toughness. But this third-generation Camry is the Toyota that made the brand an American car company.

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