A Look At Toyota’s First Pickup Truck, The Model G1

If you’ve followed the history of Toyota Motor Corporation, you know the company as we know it today didn’t come into being until 1937. Until that time, any vehicles manufactured by the brand-in-the-making bore the name of its founding family, Sachiko Toyoda and Kiichiro Toyoda. The latter Toyoda was the catalyst for the formation of the company’s automobile wing and subsequent transition into one of Japan’s biggest automobile manufacturers. 

Production officially began on the Model G1 in March of 1935, with the prototype being completed on schedule six months later. The G1 indeed left the assembly line with a name other than Toyota on the badge. However, the name forever emblazoned on the badge of the company’s first ever truck wasn’t far off, instead displaying the actual surname of the Toyoda family. Toyota’s first passenger vehicle, the model AA, debuted a year later bearing the same Toyoda badge, with vehicles utilizing that spelling until the 1937 founding of Toyota Motor Corporation.