FROM TOYOTA WITH LOVE
Japanese supercar was once undervalued, but recent auction prices have rocketed
Daniel Craig’s favourite Bond car is a Japanese supercar that’s seen its value skyrocket,
Daniel Craig’s favourite Bond car isn’t an Aston Martin. It’s a Toyota.
Craig famously said he loved the Toyota 2000GT Sean Connery drove in You Only Live Twice for its long, Coke-bottle shape and fresh, droptop esthetic. Investors love it for its reliability and aggressive driving style.
“This is the Japanese supercar,” said Jonathan Klinger, lead spokesman for Hagerty, a firm that covers classic and collectible cars.
“They were dramatically undervalued for a long time. Underappreciated. But they first started coming alive four or five years ago, and they’re a great investment.”
EBay put a 1967 2000GT painted in “solar red” on the site for $999,500 (U.S.) last month. After several updates, that sale ended this week, although the car is still for sale on the owner’s original listing. It’s one of an increasingly large number of wouldbe blue chip cars that eBay has started to list online.
RM Sotheby’s sold one for $797,500 in Amelia Island earlier this month. A Keno Brothers sale in New York last November saw one go for $683,200; the Mecum Monterey auction last year saw a perfect example draw $1,017,500.
All this for a car that cost $6,800 ($51,550 in today’s dollars) when it was released in 1965.
“They’re sought-after for many of the same reasons as the E-type and the DB5,” Klinger said. “They’re all great driving GT cars; this just hap- pens to be the Japanese version of that. And now every major auction these days will have one.”
In fact, the 2000GT has increased its value significantly since Sotheby’s listed one for $650,000 in 2011. According to the Hagerty Price Guide, the standard version model has risen in value by 2.7 per cent over the last 12 months, 53 per cent over the last three years and 170 per cent over the last five years.
Current Hagerty Price Guide values a good-condition example of the 2000GT with a 2L engine at $940,000; it values the 2.3L engine version at $1 million. (Toyota made only nine examples with that larger engine.)
Toyota released the car to compete with such European cars of the time as the Jaguar E-type, the Aston Martin GTs and the racing Ferraris, which were roundly considered the world’s most beautiful.
The idea of an Asia-made supercar was then foreign to the industry. In fact, Toyota built only 351 regular production units (including the nine 2.3L engine models) — a low volume purposefully kept down in order to mirror the well-known exclusivity of European whips.
Albrecht Goertz, who later created the Nissan Fairlady (a.k.a. the Datsun 240Z) designed it. The aluminum body, pop-up headlights and hardtop were hand-built by Yamaha technicians.
Most came in red or ivory. About 60 of them came with left-hand drive (the one selling on eBay is such an example), an important concession to global drivers because Japan uses steering wheels placed on the right side of the car.
When the company first displayed the car to the public at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1965, it was heralded as a turning point in classic Japanese automotive design. Sotheby’s defines the vehicle as “the most collectible, desirable and valuable Japanese automobile ever produced.”
The 2000GT sold for an exorbitant price for its time and quickly became the first Japanese-produced car taken seriously by collectors.