In the years that preceded the start of the Second World War, the then still largely secluded Japan was about to venture on the path of carmaking for the civilian market. Just four years before the Japanese launched their deadly attack on Pearl Harbor, the country gave birth to a name that's very present in our lives still: Toyota.
The carmaking company as we know it today was founded as Toyota Jidosha kabushikigaisha by local businessman Kiichiro Toyoda. It was an offshoot of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (later known as Toyota Industries), born eleven years earlier to make other kinds of machines – looms, mostly.
Driving the need to create a carmaker in Toyoda's name was a truck called Model G1, which was assembled by Loom Works in August 1935. It wasn't such a big hit – just 379 of them were ever made – but the company's higher-ups saw a lot of potential in four-wheeled vehicles for human and cargo transport, so a decision was made to dive head-on into this segment.
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