Toyota Camry history: corporate and automotive
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Toyota corporate history (brief)
Sakichi Toyoda, a prolific inventor, created the Toyoda Automatic Loom company based on his groundbreaking designs; money from that company and the Japanese government was used to help found Toyota Motor Company. By 1936, just after the first successful Toyoda vehicles were produced, Japan demanded that any automakers selling in the country needed to have a majority of stockholders from Japan, along with all officers, and stopped nearly all imports.
Toyoda's car operations were placed in the hands of Kiichiro Toyoda, Sakichi Toyoda’s son; they copied the Chevrolet 65-horsepower straight-six, using the same chassis and gearbox, with styling copied from the Chrysler Airflow. The first engine was produced in 1934 (the Type A), the first car and truck in 1935 (the Model A1 and G1, respectively), and its second car design in 1936 (the model AA). In 1937, Toyota Motor Company was split off.
Toyoda found its initial success building trucks and busses. The first Toyoda truck was roughly a one-ton to one and a half-ton design, conventional in nature, using (after 1936) an overhead valve six-cylinder engine that appears to have been a clone of the Chevrolet engine of the time: indeed, a large number of parts were interchangeable, and Toyoda trucks captured in the war were serviced by the Allies with Chevrolet components.
An era of rapid expansion: post-war Toyota history
In December 1945, Toyota Motor Corporation had learned from the American War Department’s industrial training program, which worked on process improvement and employee development; the program, abandoned in 1945 by the United States, lived on in Japan as Taiichi Ohno built kaizen and lean manufacturing around it. (From globalspec).
By 1947 Toyota began making the Model SA, called the Toyopet, a name to stay with Toyota for decades. The SF Toyopet was the first truly popular Toyota car, with a modified engine (still putting out 27 horsepower) and a taxi version. By 1955, Toyota was making 8,400 cars per year; by 1965, 600,000 cars per year.
In addition to all these cars, Toyota started producing a civilian truck named the Land Cruiser. The original Land Cruisers were, according to Schreier, based heavily on the legendary Dodge half-ton weapons carrier as well as the Bantam (predecessor of the Jeep). They used a bigger engine than the Jeep (their Chevrolet-clone six) and a size and configuration more like the Dodge weapons carrier, whose capacity it shares (one half ton).
Starting in 1957, Toyota started importing cars to the US. Two vehicles were imported, the Land Cruiser and Toyopet. Neither sold well; the Toyopet was withdrawn while Toyota designed a car specifically modified for the American market – a strategy which later gave us the Avalon and Camry.
In 1959, the company opened its first plant outside Japan - in Brazil. From that point on, Toyota maintained a philosophy of localizing both production and design of its products (that is, adapting vehicles to the places they will be used, as well as building them there). This builds long-term relationships with local suppliers and local labor. Part of this also means that Toyota does not merely build vehicles overseas, but also designs them there, with a network of both design and R&D facilities in North America and Europe.
By 1967, Toyota had become well established in the United States, albeit as a niche player. Toyota introduced another new car to the US: the Crown, a semi-luxury car with a new 137 cubic inch in-line six-cylinder engine delivering 115 horsepower (gross) at 5,200 rpm. One unusual feature was standard three-point seat belts, with reclining bucket seats.
The Corolla, to be America’s favorite small car, was first imported in 1969, two years after its first Japanese production. The Camry followed in 1983, the first Toyota car designed largely in the United States, to fit American tastes. While far smaller than today’s Camry, it was an immediate success, with waiting lists at many dealers.
Toyota instituted a three year, 36,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty starting in 1988, the same year the first Toyota-owned American factory started producing Camrys in Kentucky.