Although Toyota finally revealed its Supra this year after what felt like a very long wait, we have to remember that the Sports 800 came well before the Supra.
In fact, Toyota’s Gazoo Racing recently restored a 1966 Sports 800.
However, this is no ordinary Sports 800—this particular car actually won the first Suzuka 500-kilometer race in 1966.
Its rivals in that race—which included the Honda S600 and Datsun Fairlady—had to stop for fuel while the Sports 800 just kept on going was able to finish with fuel still in the tank.
Although this car put out only 70 horsepower, it two things going for it: an aerodynamic shape and a weight of just 1279 pounds, which allowed it to burn a minimal amount of fuel and crush the competition.
Unfortunately, things seemed to get a bit rough for this Sports 800 after its glory days. The car was found almost completely beyond repair in a garage, presumably abandoned by its owner. However, Gazoo Racing was able to identify the car by its No. 7 body number and determined that this was the winning car of that first Suzuka 500-km race.
After the car was discovered, Gazoo Racing decided to restore it, although it proceeded with caution since the car was in such bad condition, as we can see from this photo:
In fact, the Gazoo Racing team needed to rebuild half of the Sports 800’s body with completely new materials to fully restore it.
While they were at it, the team also improved the car’s suspension mounting, its interior, and, of course, the exterior, which was pristinely done in red, black, and white.
The Sports 800 was originally revealed at the 1962 Tokyo Auto Show and only about 3,000 of them were made between 1965-1969 for the Japanese market.
This particular Sports 800 was one of four that competed and only a few hundred of these cars are expected to still be around today.
Check out the video of this incredible restoration in action (keeping in mind the video is narrated in Japanese):