TOYOTA’S FORGOTTEN SUPERCAR

The only surviving Toyota 2000 GT in South Africa has been brought back to life in beautifully crafted fashion, after spending decades in storage at Toyota’s headquarters in Wesco Park, north of Johannesburg.

It’s a super-rare car, with Toyota in Japan having only produced 351 of these dramatic two-seaters between 1967 and 1970. The restored car that resides with Toyota South Africa is said to have been built on the 29th of May,1968.

Glancing down the perfect body lines, it is obvious that the car was the subject of an exceptionally sympathetic restoration, project-managed by Benoni-based classic car specialists Generation Old School. The bodywork and paint was carried out by Dino’s Classics of Green Hills, near Edenvale, and it was a five month labour of love for this specialist body shop.

“We were fortunate that there was very little rust, and the car had never been in a major accident,” says Dino Pinto. “We took the car down to bare metal, and then repaired all the normal little bumps and scrapes you would find on an old car.

“The bulk of the time we spent on perfecting the panel gaps. In those days panel gaps weren’t nearly as precise as they are today.”

There was lots of debate about what colour to paint the car. The VIN plate on the car, MF10-10207, listed the original colour as Thunder Silver. But when the car began a four-decade slumber at Toyota’s head office in the early 1980s, with a little over 30 000 miles on the clock, it was finished in an eye-catching red colour.

Normally a quick decision would have been made to return it to the original colour, but that red paint was part of a very special history pertaining to the car. It was driven for the first decade of its life by the wife of Toyota South Africa’s founder and Chairman, Dr Albert Wessels. Presumably Mrs Susanne Wessels wanted something a lot more eye-catching than Thunder Silver, and had the colour changed to Solar Red. Good choice!

The decision to again repaint the car Solar Red was obviously a tribute to Albert Wessels and his wife Susanne, and the special place the 2000 GT held in the history of Toyota South Africa.Dino’s Classics used PPG paint when applying three coats of base coat and three coats of clear coat to achieve a stunning finish. What is immediately noticeable is that the paint doesn’t have the overly thick look of some newly restored cars; the curvaceous lines of the steel body still show through!

Wynand Strydom of Generation Old School says the two-year re-build was a complete nut-and-bolt restoration, with a few key exceptions: “We left the dashboard in place, because it was bonded to the body, and we didn’t want to risk cracking the original rosewood finish. We also left one of the badges with just a hint of patina showing its age. And the aftermarket air conditioner installed behind the seats was left in place too, because that is part of the car’s personal history, and makes it unique.”

Wynand was particularly lucky with the engine of the car. With such an old and rare engine he didn’t want to drive the car and risk a blow-up, and this proved fortuitous as when the cylinder head was removed by engine specialist Wessels Motors in Kempton Park; it was discovered that the cam chain was being held together by just one link that was about to break! Wessels Motors managed to organise a replacement for the chain, as well as fit new piston rings, using items from another make of car that had similar bore and stroke dimensions. They also hand-made all the gaskets required to do the engine rebuild.

Yamaha was originally responsible for the 2000 GT engine development, which was a 2,0-litre straight-six, fitted with a trio of 40 mm Mikuni-Solex side-draught carburettors. It had twin overhead camshafts but was mildly tuned to produce 150 horsepower (110 kW). But it could rev extremely smoothly to 7 000 rpm. It had a 0-100 km/h time in under 10 seconds and a top speed of over 215 km/h. That was quick for a two-litre in those days!

Wynand says it was a wonderful experience being present when Wessels Motors started the re-built engine and then tuned the carburettors by ear after initial set-up. Indeed, the straight-six engine has a really distinctive pitch. Incidentally, those hatches on the flanks of the car are to promote access to the battery and the air-filter.

The Wessels 2000 GT was one of a batch of three (quite possibly four) that were imported by Toyota South Africa in 1968, for “use by select staff members as demonstrators”, and to promote the Toyota brand, which was just then moving into the car market here. Prior to that, since 1961, Toyota had founded its South African business on the Toyota Stout, a large bakkie powered by a wheezy four-cylinder engine, whereas similarly sized bakkies from Ford and General Motors and International Harvester had six-cylinder engines or even V8s! Thing was, the Stout was much cheaper, and had a higher load rating than the American pick-ups, so Toyota was able to sell plenty of these Japanese unknowns.

When the 2000 GT was formally road tested by Car magazine for its January 1969 edition, only one Toyota passenger car was formally listed for sale, and that was the Corona 1.5 sedan at R1 790. By contrast the pricing for the unlisted, special-import Toyota 2000GT was quoted at R8 500!

According to respected journalist Harvey Thomas, who published a book on the forming of South Africa’s most successful car company titled “Never say Goodbye”, four 2000 GTs were imported. Two were reportedly sold to local enthusiasts, one went to Mrs Wessels, and one became the company car of Basil Landau, who had become the Managing Director of Toyota South Africa in 1965.

After the Wessels car was handed back to Toyota to form part of a classic collection in the early 1980s, it gradually developed a few problems, as cars that stand idle for a length of time often do. One of the big stumbling blocks in getting the car restored was that the windscreen was damaged, and as the car was so rare, no solution to this problem could be found. It was then consigned to an underground parking bay at the Wesco Park Toyota headquarters, and although various attempts to undertake a restoration were made, this didn’t happen until 2020.

As for the other Toyota 2000 GTs that made their way to South Africa in the late 1960s, according to Wynand Strydom, an American collector, Bob Tkacik who is based in Maine, bought three of the 2000 GTs that were originally brought into South Africa. Tkacik was very helpful to Wynand in supplying information on the 2000 GT to assist in the restoration process.

“At first Bob told me that this car couldn’t be an original, but now he has traced the VIN number as one that vanished off the system some years ago. “

In 1986, as a youngish motoring journalist, I was lucky enough to drive the ex-Mrs Wessels car. In the article written for Car magazine appearing in its September 1986 edition, I noted that Toyota believed there were still five 2000 GTs in the country at that time. That seems to suggest that at least one or two of the excessively-priced GTs were actually bought by private customers back in the late 1960s.

Researching on the internet, I found a story written about two further Toyota 2000 GTs that made their way to South Africa via Mozambique in the early 1970s and were bought by a Johannesburg businessman. So, this could mean that Bob Tkacik, who is a world renowned 2000 GT authority, bought the original three Toyota South Africa “demonstration” cars, and that the fourth was Mrs Wessels car, possibly an afterthought on the part of Albert Wessels. The production date of the Susanne Wessels car is listed as May 29,1968. That would still leave the other two ex-Mozambique cars unaccounted for.

It is quite amazing that of the 351 Toyota 2000 GTs built, five or perhaps six of them ended up in South Africa!

The red car that was on display for a media launch recently  is not only very real, it looks perfect in every detail. It has taken over 40 years but Toyota South Africa finally has its museum halo car restored to an appropriate level.

By Stuart Johnston