From Looms to Cars: How Toyota Began

Toyota origins at a glance

The story matters because Toyota's methods, not only its money, came from the loom works. The idea that equipment should stop itself when something goes wrong started with Sakichi's looms and is still a pillar of Toyota production today.

Sakichi Toyoda, the inventor

Sakichi Toyoda was the son of a carpenter and farmer, who taught him woodworking. In a farming region where women wove cloth by hand, he set out to make their work lighter and faster. According to Toyota Industries, his inventions followed in steps:

• 1890: the Toyoda Wooden Hand Loom;
• 1896: the Toyoda Power Loom, one of the first power looms made in Japan;
• 1924: the Toyoda Automatic Loom Type G, a high-speed loom that changed shuttles without stopping.

The Type G also stopped by itself when a thread broke. That principle, later called jidoka (automation with a human touch), meant one worker could watch many looms, because no faulty cloth was made while nobody was looking. In 2007 the Type G was added to Japan's list of Mechanical Engineering Heritage. Sakichi is often called the "King of Japanese Inventors", and in 1973 the Japan Patent Office named him one of Japan's ten great inventors. He also gave Toyota the "5 Whys" method: ask why five times to reach the root cause of a problem.

Sakichi founded Toyoda Automatic Loom Works on 18 November 1926 to build and sell the Type G, and its plant in Kariya opened in 1927. In 1929 the company sold the patent rights for the automatic loom to Platt Brothers & Co. of Oldham, England, then one of the largest textile equipment makers in the world. The proceeds are widely reported to have helped fund the first car work. Sakichi died in Nagoya on 30 October 1930.

Kiichiro Toyoda and the automobile department

Kiichiro studied mechanical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, graduating in 1920. Trips abroad, to the United States and England in 1921–1922 and to Europe and America in 1929–1930, showed him the scale of the motor industry. At home, Ford's Yokohama plant (1925) and General Motors' Osaka factory (1927) dominated the market: in 1929 they built about 28,000 vehicles in Japan between them.

Kiichiro began studying petrol engines in 1930. On 1 September 1933 the loom works set up its Automotive Production Division. The engineers learned by taking apart American cars. The Type A engine of 1934 was reverse-engineered from a 1933 Chevrolet six, and the chassis and electrics followed a 1932 Ford. The body was modelled on a DeSoto Airflow bought and dismantled in 1934.

Model A1, G1 and AA: the first vehicles

Three A1 passenger car prototypes were completed in May 1935; none survives. Toyota gave priority to the G1 truck, built from August 1935, because trucks were more likely to earn money quickly. The AA saloon went into production in 1936, with the 3,389 cc Type A overhead-valve six producing 46 kW (62 hp) through a three-speed column-shift gearbox.

By our count from these figures, Toyota built about 1,950 cars of the A family (AA, AB, AE and AC) between 1936 and 1948, fewer than a single month of Corolla production in later decades. When Toyota wanted an AA for its 50th anniversary in 1987, it could not find one and built a replica for the Toyota Automobile Museum. An original AA was found in 2008 and is now in the Louwman Museum in The Hague.

Why Toyoda became Toyota

The first vehicles carried the family name Toyoda. In 1936 the company switched to Toyota. Written in katakana, トヨタ takes eight strokes, and eight is considered lucky because the character widens towards its base, suggesting growth. The new name was also simpler to write and sounded clearer, with a voiceless "t" in place of the "d". It also separated the business from the family name, which literally means "fertile rice paddy", an image linked with farming rather than engineering.

On 28 August 1937 the automobile department became an independent company, Toyota Motor Co., Ltd., with Kiichiro as vice president; he became president in 1941. The large Koromo plant opened on 3 November 1938, and Toyota still marks that day as its founding day.

War, near-bankruptcy and the 1950 crisis

During the war the government controlled production, and Toyota built mostly trucks. It was designated a munitions company in January 1944, and in 1943 it even built a two-seat helicopter prototype. On 14 August 1945, one day before Japan's surrender, an American air raid destroyed about a quarter of the Koromo plant. The old 1cars article said the plant was hardly damaged; the company records show otherwise.

Passenger car production resumed in October 1947 with the small Toyopet SA, a two-door saloon with a backbone frame and rounded styling. Money soon ran out. By the end of 1949 Toyota was close to bankruptcy and needed a bank loan, on condition that it split off its sales arm: Toyota Motor Sales Co. was founded in 1950 and remained separate until July 1982. In June 1950 a two-month strike followed job cuts, and Kiichiro resigned on 5 June 1950, taking responsibility. Taizo Ishida took over. Orders for more than 5,000 trucks from the US military during the Korean War then saved the company. Kiichiro died on 27 March 1952, aged 57.

The Toyota Production System and its loom roots

The production method that later made Toyota famous joined two ideas from the founders. Kiichiro's "just-in-time" principle was to make only what is needed, when it is needed. Sakichi's jidoka was to stop the line the moment a defect appears. Engineer Taiichi Ohno, who had moved from the Toyoda spinning business to the car company, developed both into the Toyota Production System from the 1950s. Any worker can pull an andon cord to halt the line and call for help, so a fault is fixed at its source. The old article credited Ohno with jidoka itself; in fact the principle goes back to the Type G loom.

First exports: Land Cruiser and Crown

Toyota's first steps abroad came in the 1950s:

• May 1953: five Land Cruisers reached El Salvador, among the first Japanese vehicles in the Americas;
• 1955: the Toyopet Crown went into production as Toyota's main passenger car;
• 1957: Toyota Motor Sales USA was founded, and the Crown became the first Japanese car exported to the United States, alongside the Land Cruiser;
• 12 November 1962: the first Toyota plant outside Japan opened in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil;
• 1963: Erla Auto Import became distributor for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, bringing in 400 Crowns, Toyota's first real step into Europe;
• 1968: Salvador Caetano in Portugal became the first European plant to assemble Toyotas from kits.

The early Crown was too slow and heavy for American motorways, and sales were poor. The rugged Land Cruiser sold better, and in the 1960s the Corona and Corolla gave Toyota the cars the export markets wanted. By the end of the 1960s it had exported its millionth vehicle. The halo car of that decade, the Toyota 2000GT, showed that the company could also build a serious sports car; its line led to the Supra, which 1cars places among the best sports cars. More cars of the decade are in the 1960s classics section.

What became of the loom business

The loom company still exists as Toyota Industries Corporation, based in Kariya. It moved into forklifts in 1956 and, after buying BT Industries in 2000, formed the world's largest forklift group, Toyota Material Handling. It also makes car air-conditioning compressors, engines and textile equipment. A tender offer by Toyota Fudosan, a Toyota group company, took it private, and its shares were reportedly delisted in June 2026.

The family's ties to the car company remain strong. Sakichi's great-grandson Akio Toyoda is chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation. The Toyota Century limousine of 1967 was named for the 100th anniversary of Sakichi's birth. The story of the company after 1960, from the Corolla to Lexus, the Prius and today's line-up, is told in the full history of Toyota, and every model is listed in the Toyota catalogue. Toyota's best-known off-roader today is the Land Cruiser 200, a direct descendant of the 1950s export model.

Where to see early Toyotas and looms today

Three museums tell this story. The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya opened in 1994 in the red-brick building of the former Toyoda spinning and weaving works. It shows Sakichi's looms working next to early car production, and it is ideal for visitors who want to see how the loom and car businesses connect. The Toyota Automobile Museum in Nagakute, opened in 1989, holds the AA replica and Toyota's early cars among a wider collection. In Europe, the Louwman Museum in The Hague keeps the surviving original AA.

Timeline: from the first loom to the first exports

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