A history of Toyota's greatest sports cars

Vios, Corolla, Camry, Hilux – these are the core models of Toyota, and over the years, they have acquired an enviable reputation of boasting rock solid reliability. Coupled with Toyota’s peerless aftersales track record, it is little wonder that Toyota cars are generally seen as the safe choice for consumers.

But whilst these bread and butter cars dominate the sales chart and have been responsible in propelling Toyota to its current position of strength, the company also has a healthy dose of sportiness infused into its DNA over the years.

For a company that primarily makes practical and reliable cars, it is far more steeply ingrained in motorsports than most would expect. Formula One, WRC, Le Mans, Super GT, Nascar, and even the Toyota Gazoo Racing Vios Challenge Cup, no other car brand boasts a lengthier racing CV.

Besides its usual staple of solid and reliable family hold-alls, Toyota is also known to trudge out the occasional enthusiasts’ car; and they tend to be rather good.

ENTHUSIASM YOU CAN COUNT ON

Since the 1960s, Toyota has regularly surprised and delighted enthusiasts with a long line of iconic sporty cars that continue to be the stuff of legends today. As with all things related to the company, Toyota’s sports car lineage had humble beginnings with a diminutive 790cc 2-cylinder boxer powering the Sports 800.

Just two years after the Yota-Hachi’s release, Toyota further upped its ante with the 2000GT, Japan’s first supercar and one of the most highly collectible vehicles in the world today. Even rarer than the Sports 800, only 337 units of the 2000GT were ever built in its three-year production run from 1967 to 1970.

Built in far larger numbers was the Toyota Celica, a model that debuted in 1970 but one that went on to evolve over seven model generations in 30 years. With over four million units sold worldwide, the Celica represents a significant part of Toyota’s sports car heritage.

From the Celica spawned the Supra, a model that started off as a higher-end six-cylinder derivative eventually growing its own wings to become a its own standalone model that eventually attained supercar status with the A80 generation in 1993.

But whilst the Supra sat atop the performance and technology food chain, Toyota never neglected to democratize driving fun for the masses. Its best-selling car, the Corolla, was used as the basis to create one of the most recognizable drift machines ever, the AE86 Levin made famous thanks to the exploits of a certain fictional tofu delivery boy.

Those glorious years of the 1980s and 1990s also saw Toyota try its hands on creating a mid-engined sports car, resulting in two generations of the MR2 and the MR-S that subsequently succeeded it.

The 2000s were less than kind years for Toyota enthusiasts, however, as a global slowdown of sports car demand saw the Supra ending production in 2002 followed by the Celica in 2006, and finally the MR-S in 2007. It proved to be a brief setback, however, as Toyota would soon return to the enthusiast’s heartland with the utterly brilliant 86, a car that drew inspiration from the Sports 800, 2000GT, and also the Corolla AE86.

Emboldened with a renewed desire to capture the spirit of driving enthusiasts again, Toyota has reintroduced the Supra, back after a 17-year hiatus. Developed in collaboration with BMW, the all-new A90 GR Supra picks up where the A80 left off, offering purists the supreme balance of a front-engine rear-wheel drive chassis with the inherent smoothness of an inline 6-cylinder engine.

Despite its obvious strength in building reliable everyday cars for the masses, Toyota evidently also has a good knack in making cars that tickle the fancy of enthusiasts. More than five decades have passed since the Sports 800 started the ball rolling, and whilst the lineage nearly saw demise in the mid-2000s, recent successes of the 86 and Supra mean that the Toyota sports car DNA is well and truly alive.