A few years ago, as a guest of Toyota at a NASCAR race, the company was at pains to prove its American bonafides. A fleet of Tundra safety trucks buzzed the paddock with the words "Built In Texas" emblazoned on their flanks. In a bid to contend with Ford and GM, Toyota knows it’s at a disadvantage, a Japanese interloper in that most American motorsport.
I’ve always found this funny. How is a Toyota Tundra not an American car? Forget the Toyota badge for a moment. Not only is it built in America—and always has been—it is designed by Americans, in America, for Americans. And it’s not just the Tundra; Many Japanese cars are rooted entirely in America.
Toyota was the first Japanese automaker to export to the US, when it introduced the Toyopet Crown in 1957. In his autobiography, longtime Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda wrote that Toyota was compelled to export over fears it would be boxed out of the US market. The company wasn’t confident in the car and its launch was a disaster.
"[W]e took our chances and began exporting to the US to 'stake our claim.' But the reception was horrible."
The Crown was underpowered by contemporary standards. It was quick enough for rural Japan, but not America’s burgeoning interstate system.
"In retrospect," Toyoda wrote, "that first initiative of ours was very poorly thought out indeed, but our timing was definitely not off. In fact, having this bitter experience behind us helped us work that much harder to make cars that were right for the US market."
How is a Toyota Tundra not an American car?
Other automakers followed with similar experiences. Each company quickly righted the ship, realizing that to succeed in America, it had to build cars for Americans. By the early 1970s, Japan exported many high-quality cars to the U.S. The Datsun 510 and 240Z showed that European-style performance could be cheap and reliable. The first Honda Civic did more with less and Toyota had the Corolla. The 1973 Oil Crisis caught Detroit flat-footed, and Japanese automakers had many enticing options for buyers seeking better economy, reliability, and quality. American automakers never really recovered.
Honda was the first Japanese carmaker to build a car in the United States with the Accord in 1982. By making a car in America, Honda wouldn’t be subject to the protectionist policies of either the US or Japan, and it could better meet local demand. Datsun followed a couple years later, and Toyota partnered up with General Motors to jointly run a plant in Fremont, California, New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., or (NUMMI). Soon after, it too opened up its own plant.
Today, every single car Honda sells in America, with the exception of the Civic Type R, is built in North America. A majority of Toyota products are too, and the same deal with Nissan. Subaru, a smaller player relatively speaking, builds about 300,000 cars in Indiana a year. After its divorce from Ford, Mazda stopped making cars in the US for a while, but now it cranks out CX-50s at a plant co-owned with Toyota in Alabama. Mitsubishi is the only mainstream Japanese automaker selling cars in America that aren’t built here.
But it’s not just manufacturing cars in America. Japanese automakers have long operated R&D centers here to do what Eiji Toyoda realized was necessary after the failure of the Toyopet Crown—make cars tailor-made for the US. Toyota Motor North America R&D, for example, was opened in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1977.
So are these sorts of cars—built in America for Americans—Japanese at all? Of course they are.
Sheldon Brown, chief engineer for the Tacoma, explains that in Toyota’s case, it doesn’t matter where a car is developed, and who it’s developed for—it’s still a Toyota.
"I would tell you that while [the Tacoma] was largely developed in North America, it is still in the spirit of the Toyota mentality," he told Motor1. "The principled understanding of we’re always going to build in quality, we’re always thinking about durability, we’re always thinking about 'Does this still have the Toyota DNA?'"
Brown says this all comes down to Toyota’s corporate culture, the Toyota Way. It’s a culture that’s been studied extensively and has had a huge impact on how organizations work well beyond the automotive world.
"While Japan has always been our leadership area for excellence in manufacturing, it's the process and the culture that they have," Brown explained. "The culture starts with respect for people and it starts about a process and we follow that process and that process is blueprinted. So it really doesn't matter where you build the truck because you're still following the same core fundamentals."
"I would tell you that while [the Tacoma] was largely developed in North America, it is still in the spirit of the Toyota mentality."
Driving the Tundra TRD Pro you see here, it’s hard to not get wrapped up in its American-ness. This is a huge beast, perfectly equipped for tackling America’s vast terrain with your spouse and 2.5 children in tow. Despite the TOYOTA logo on the front, this wouldn’t fit in Japan, in all senses of the word "fit." And yet, it rides on a frame shared with the mighty Land Cruiser. It’s built to the same incredible standards that have vaulted Toyota trucks to iconic status.
You could call it Japanese-American, but even that seems reductive, an oversimplification. I get why at NASCAR races, Toyota felt the need to make people aware of the truck’s U.S origins. It’s a simple story to convert consumers who might be skeptical of a "foreign" car. But the more complicated story, the one that can’t be summed up with three words stickered on the side, is far more interesting.
