This is Not a Drill: There's a Toyota 2000GT Heading to Auction
With only 351 examples produced, it’s extremely rare for a Toyota 2000GT to go up for sale, but that’s exactly what will happen in January when RM Sotheby’s auctions off a rare Bellatrix Yellow example in Arizona.
The 2000GT was originally penned by Yamaha, which first offered it to Nissan as a redesigned Fairlady. Nissan declined the offer, but Toyota later bought it after deciding it would be a good way to shake-up its pedestrian image (yes, that was even a problem for Toyota in the early 1960s). It was powered by a Yamaha-developed two-liter inline-six engine in the front with an iron block and dual-overhead cams, which made 150 horsepower at a sky-high redlined of 7,000 RPM and took the little two-door to a top speed of 135 mph.
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The example RM Sotheby’s will auction is one of 62 left-hand drive models produced and one of the very few to ever leave its home market of Japan. It was bought in 1983 by 2000GT collector Craig Zinn, who restored it and used it as his everyday driver for several years. Zinn then commissioned a show-quality restoration of the car before selling it to its current owner in 2008, where it has remained in his collection since.
RM Sotheby’s is predicting it will sell for anywhere between $600,000 and $700,000, but we wouldn’t be shocked if it sold for more. The 2000GT seems to be taking on more and more interest as the years go by, and are often described as the most collectible and valuable Japanese cars ever built.
[Source: RM Sotheby’s]
Photos by Darin Schnabel ©2017 courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Sam McEachern holds a diploma in journalism from St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, and has been covering the automotive industry for over 5 years. He conducts reviews and writes AutoGuide's news content. He's a die-hard motorsports fan with a passion for performance cars of all sorts.
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