Tragic Bronson
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https://jalopnik.com/how-the-first-toyota-dealer-in-florida-was-born-of-desp-1820984268One of Robert Zinn’s earliest memories is of riding around in the back with his two older brothers in a boxy economy car his father was trying to sell. The big sign mounted on the roof read “30 MPG,” but it was 1965 and gas was cheap, so nobody gave a damn. It was a perilous start to their father’s new business: selling cars in America from this relatively obscure Japanese company called Toyota.
It’s almost impossible to have a day where you go outside and you don’t see some kind of Toyota. They’re everywhere. A Toyota has been America’s best-selling car for over 10 years. The company has six manufacturing plants in the U.S. alone, and thousands of dealerships across the nation selling its cars. It, General Motors and Volkswagen are always vying to be the world’s largest automaker.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Toyota opened its very first dealership in the U.S. in Hollywood, California, on Oc. 31, 1957, with the charge into the American market headed up by Shotaro Kamiya, Toyota’s president of motor sales, as noted by Hemmings. In the mid-1950s, the company sent a few cars over to test on our roads in order to work out a plan to sell them here.
Interesting story about one of Toyota's Florida dealers, the Zinn family.