The sliding glass canopy — impractical as a production feature, mainly because it was too heavy — had evolved into a Targa-style roof with a removable panel that could be stored in the trunk. The 800 came out several months before Porsche’s 911 Targa, officially making it the first production car with such a thing.
It kept the Publica’s double-wishbone front suspension and rear leaf springs, along with the design of the body, floor, and chassis. However, thinner-gauge, lighter-weight steel was used to make the unibody. The body panels and Targa-roof were built using almost paper-thin aluminum with virtually zero rust resistance. The mild-mannered 690cc air-cooled flat-twin cylinder engine from the Publica was bored out to 790cc. Twin carburetors were added, and compression was boosted to 45 horsepower with a top speed of around 96 mph. Every effort was made to keep it light; in the end, it weighed only 1,280 pounds.
With a price of just $1,653, it sold well to the younger generation but moved only 1,235 units in 1965, and sales bottomed out in 1969 with just 215. Thanks to its dependability and gas mileage, though, it excelled at endurance racing and won the 1965 All-Japan Clubman Championship Race, the ’66 Suzuka 500km Endurance Race, and took third (behind a pair of Toyota’s 2000GTs) at the Fuji 24-hour race in 1967.
There may have never been the successful lineage we know today — be it the rare and iconic 2000GT, Supra, Celica, MR2, and others — without the Sports 800. One could even call it the Godfather of Toyota’s sports car empire.
[Featured image by TTTNIS via Wikimedia Commons| Scaled | CC BY-SA 1.0]
