Toyota Crown Eight
Car of the Day #266: 1964 Toyota Crown Eight – Foundational
Today’s car was the first from Japan to feature cruise control.
And with that, today is a good time to shine the flashlight on an important and well-regarded Japanese sedan, the Toyota Crown Eight (featuring a cruise control system called Auto Drive.)
The Crown Eight is a perfect illustration of the battle between car companies — who wanted to create world-class cars — and governments, who had rigorous standards and enforced size, emissions, and other regulations from an early time.
In Japan, the Crown Eight, on-sale as the country began the nine day long celebration before Emperor Showa's birthday in 1964, exceeded every vehicle size regulation in a bid to compete with the large American cars that were favoured by executives.
Executives who knew the American imports also didn’t fit size regulations. If the customers don’t care, why should Toyota?
1964 Toyota Crown Eight brochure scan • via Toyota, retrojdm.com
To be truly feature for feature, Toyota would also need a V8 engine, itself Japan's first in a production car.
Yes, you read that correctly. The 2.6-litre aluminum-alloy V8 was much smaller than its American competition but was pretty state-of-the-art, especially as the country's first attempt at an eight cylinder engine. Making 115 horsepower at 5,000 rpm, I'd love to hear one of these engines run at speed — it must sound quite unique. See below for a brief clip of it.
Japan's popular cartoon Mighty Atom (Astro Boy over here) had been on the air for more than a decade by this point, and when living in a society where kids are watching a show with a ‘robot’ star, Toyota must have felt it necessary to cram ever last whizz-bang feature into the Crown Eight.
1964 Toyota Crown Eight • via Toyota Museum
Crown Eight also had a 2-speed Toyoglide automatic transmission, power steering, cruise control, power windows, light control*, and power vent windows.
The power door locks were electromagnetic, by the way. Updated through its run to include a 4-speed manual transmission with a floor shifter and a 3-speed manual transmission version with overdrive, the Crown Eight ended up also being the country's first V8-powered sports sedan.
