89 years ago, Toyota was born thanks to… weaving looms

On August 28, 1937, Toyota Motor Company was officially born in Japan. A birth made possible by an activity that seemed far removed from automobiles: weaving.

Before manufacturing Corollas, Land Cruisers, and tens of millions of cars, Toyota was involved in textiles. Or nearly so. The history of the Japanese giant indeed begins with Sakichi Toyoda, a brilliant inventor who devoted much of his life to perfecting weaving looms.

His son Kiichiro Toyoda, however, looks elsewhere. Fascinated by the rise of the automobile, particularly in the United States and Europe, he is convinced that Japan must also develop its own industry. An ambition that obviously requires a lot of money.

And this is where weaving looms come back into the story. In 1929, the rights to a particularly sophisticated patent developed by the family business were sold to the British group Platt Brothers for £100,000. A portion of this windfall would allow Kiichiro to pursue his automotive dream.

A Name, A Vision

In 1933, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works thus opened an automotive department. A first engine appeared in 1934, the prototype A1 in 1935, and then the Toyota AA, the brand’s first production car, in 1936.

The adventure quickly gains momentum. On August 28, 1937, the automotive activity becomes an independent company: Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. is officially established. A date that Toyota still remembers as its founding day.

Why Toyota and not Toyoda? The new name is notably simpler to write in Japanese and requires eight brush strokes, a number traditionally associated with prosperity.

Nearly nine decades later, Toyota has become one of the largest automobile manufacturers on the planet. And all of this because one day, a Japanese family excelled at making… weaving looms.

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