Before the 2000GT: The Tiny Toyota Sports 800 That Rewrote the Rules

Before the 2000GT and the beloved AE86, there was a featherweight Toyota that put the brand on the sports car map decades earlier. In 1965. Toyota introduced the Sports 800, a two-door coupe weighing just 1,279 pounds, powered by a 790cc air-cooled flat-twin engine that produced only 44 horsepower.

It borrowed its chassis from the humble Publica 700 economy car, but with an aluminum hood, roof, and trunk lid, plus thin-gauge steel panels, it was built to be light and tossable, not fast in a straight line.

The Sports 800’s most surprising innovation came in the form of a removable aluminum roof panel, a targa top that could be stored in the trunk. Toyota launched this design in 1965, a full year before Porsche introduced the 911 Targa. 9 mpg, making it a formidable endurance racer at events like the 1966 Suzuka 500 km and the 1967 Fuji 24-hour race, where its fuel efficiency meant fewer pit stops.

Today, only about 10% of the original 3,131 Sports 800s survive. Rust, scarce parts, and Japan’s strict inspection standards claimed most of them. A right-hand-drive example with 23,000 miles sold on Bring a Trailer in 2024 for $28,500, while a left-hand-drive model from Oregon fetched $41,000 in 2023.

Though largely forgotten, the Sports 800 set the template for Toyota’s affordable, lightweight, rear-wheel-drive sports cars, a philosophy that lives on in the modern GR86.