Photo: screenshot from Youtube
Jay Leno might not have much of a fashion sense, but he knows just where to look to give you the most obscure and amazingly interesting bits of automotive history.
While in Japan, the denim chin visited a Toyota museum and actually got to drive a replica of the very first Toyota ever built, the 1936 AA sedan. Why a Replica? Because this car is sore rare, none actually exists.
The sedan has a ladder chassis and a six-cylinder engine in the front. Only three A1 prototypes were built in 1935. Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of the company drove one of them to his father’s grave, the same father that started Toyoda Loom Works and have his son the money to start a car company.
The production version was called the AA and about a thousand of them were built until 1943. As you can see from the museum pieces, the car was entirely hand fabricated.
Very few people have driven the AA on camera, and it’s interesting that Jay finds this a solid car. As you’d expect from the Japanese, they show painstaking attention to detail, and the interior is an exquisite piece of luxury.
[YOUTBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHUs9qmrheA]
The sedan has a ladder chassis and a six-cylinder engine in the front. Only three A1 prototypes were built in 1935. Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of the company drove one of them to his father’s grave, the same father that started Toyoda Loom Works and have his son the money to start a car company.
The production version was called the AA and about a thousand of them were built until 1943. As you can see from the museum pieces, the car was entirely hand fabricated.
Very few people have driven the AA on camera, and it’s interesting that Jay finds this a solid car. As you’d expect from the Japanese, they show painstaking attention to detail, and the interior is an exquisite piece of luxury.
[YOUTBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHUs9qmrheA]
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