Toyota Celebrates 75 Years with a Comprehensive, Interactive Vehicle "Lineage"

For a business to be around for 75 years is quite an accomplishment. For Toyota to not only succeed after 75 years, but be a worldwide leader is more than impressive and did it with “Ever-better Cars.”

Toyota was founded in August of 1937 and like any small business starting out, there were some missteps, but by in large Toyota, has made the right moves and is now celebrating its 75^th year! To celebrate Toyota has launched a website with a comprehensive “family tree” of all of its vehicles (some you’ve heard of and some you haven’t). Check out the website HERE.

“The decision to position “Ever-better Cars” as the overall theme throughout the main volume and supplementary data volume of our 75-year history compilation was made in 2013,” said Yukitoshi Funo, executive vice president of Toyota. “Because “ever-better cars” were the words President Akio Toyoda used to address Toyota employees when he came into the office in 2009 in the midst of difficult business times we found them to be most appropriate in concisely expressing our company’s continuous dedication to work over what would become three-quarters of a century.”

The coolest and most interactive feature of the website is the ability to look up a vehicle’s lineage by body type, model, year or even engine type. According to Funo, the three points of the compilation were 1) Make it easy to read 2) Objectivity 3) Make it comprehensive.

The tools provided on the website, do just that.

“The ability to look up the lineage of your car, or the car you grew up with, or the car you are considering buying is a really awesome,” said Ted Klarich, general manager of Burien Toyota. “Whether you know a lot about cars or not, it’s really interesting to see where Toyota started and how the company and each model got to where it is.

Here’s a step by step how the website works according to this article:

“First, decide whether you want to search by make, body type or year, and then browse through the respective lists to find a vehicle you're interested in learning more about.

Selecting a vehicle takes you to a segment of a vast, intricate family tree connecting Toyotas of the past and present. Small notations indicate when models entered and exited specific markets and when major changes -- such as the transition from rear-wheel to front-wheel drive -- occurred.

Once you've honed in on your model of choice -- say, for example, the Toyota Masterace Surf -- click on its respective photo icon. A popup window will appear with a model description, specifications and the plant in which the car was built. There's also a helpful name origin section, and for some models, scans of period catalogs and video features.

At any point in time, you can select a new model via a bar on the left-hand side of the screen.

As if that wasn't enough, there's also a supplementary engine-type chart -- useful for making sense of the often confusing engine codes Toyota employs as well as showing when and where specific engines made an appearance.”

For more information about current Toyota models, go to the Burien Toyota website. But if you’re interested in their lineage, be sure to check out Toyota’s 75^th anniversary website!