When Toyota First Came to America

We have been part of life in America for over 50 years. While we’re all about making great cars and trucks, our story is bigger than our vehicles.

We first came to the U.S. in 1957, when we opened a dealership in Hollywood, California. That year just 287 customers purchased the “Toyopet Crown,” our first vehicle sold here. More than a half century later, our story in America includes ten plants across the U.S. that produce over a million and a quarter vehicles a year. It’s a story of 39,000 jobs and charitable commitments totaling over $700 million to support safety, education and the environment in America.

Our story also extends to things you probably never guessed, like rebuilding the visitor center at Yellowstone National Park or earning more patents in a single year than any other automaker. Or Apple. Or Google. It’s about sharing our manufacturing and managerial know-how with nonprofits and community partners across the country so they can help more people, more quickly – such as the St. Bernard Project in New Orleans, which is rebuilding homes after Hurricane Katrina, and Food Bank for New York City.

We know that what you drive is personal. It’s fitting then that our story is also about a team of people who put their skills and dedication to work each day for the good of our families, our communities and the roads we share.

This is just the story of when Toyota came to America. Next we will talk about when Findlay first started.

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