|
A white new crown, the 100 millionth unit of Toyota vehicles, came out from a production line at Motomachi plant today. Auto manufacturers which exceeded 100 million units of accumulated production are only three companies, GM, Ford and Toyota. On this memorable day, I visited the Toyota Auto Museum in Nagakute, Aichi prefecture |
|
It is the 10th anniversary of the museum. The new museum building was opened in April this year, cerebrating the anniversary. At the same time, a restored car was put on display at the museum. It was "Ohtomo-go." The restoration of Ohtomo-go started in 1996, co-working with the National Science Museum and it was completed in 1998. Although the museum has a big collection of not only Japanese vehicles but many foreign makes, the today's page of my diary refers only with the restoration of Ohtomo-go.
As shown in the following pictures, the restored Ohtomo-go looks much more noble and beautiful compared with competitive Ford and Chevrolet. Furthermore it runs very smoothly on road.
|
|
A few of engine parts and an almost complete set of design charts of Ohtomo-go have been kept by the National Science Museum. The Ohtomo-go was restored by utilizing all these materials and data. The whole restoration works were recorded by video cameras. You can see how the restoration was made and also how the car run smoothly and beautifully on road on TV screen installed by the side of exhibited car.
The specifications of vehicle is as follows:
1925 year model, three passenger convertible sedan, air cool straight four cylinder engine 943cc, weight 450kg, total length 3036mm, total width 1212mm
While supply of cars in Japan depended mostly imports from U.S.A. and Europe in nineteen twenties, about three hundreds units of Ohtomo-go were built solely by Japanese from 1924 through 1929. They developed engines of an air cool 1338cc and a water cool 1487cc together with the standard air cool 943cc. They sold the vehicles nationally from Hokkaido in north to Kagoshima in south.
But the mass production method of cars was developed in U.S.A. by this time.
|
Low cost cars such as T-Ford (left picture:1927 year model) or Chevrolet (right picture: 1925 year model) flooded into the Japanese market. |
|
The Ohtomo-go could not stand against them and was obliged to stop their production only after 5 years from the beginning of production.
The restored vehicle taught us that our predecessors had made efforts to build cars by their own hands with a comparatively high level technogy.
