This is the Weirdest Car I’ve Ever Imported | Toyota Origin

Yeah, this is in pretty bad shape. I spent $30,000 on a sight unseen Japanese auction car that almost nobody in America has ever even heard of. It has a Toyota super engine, rear-wheel drive, suicide doors, hand-finished body work inspired by the first Toyota Crown. It's called the Toyota Origin. Toyota built roughly 1,000 of them, and my obsession with this car started because of a weird coincidence on a street in Tokyo. Like many Americans, I had no idea that this car even existed. My first trip to Japan, never even saw one. But on my second trip to Tokyo, I saw not one, but two, and that's where the problem started. I'm walking through Dakenyama, one of my most favorite neighborhoods in Tokyo. I see a car sitting underneath this beautiful desert modernist stone garage. I had no idea what I was looking at at the time because it looked old, but not old. The curves, the chrome, the suicide doors look like they came from the 50s. The paint, the glass, the fit, the finish, the overall proportions were modern. It was one of the most striking cars I'd ever seen because my brain couldn't immediately identify it or categorize it. I didn't know what it was. Incredibly, the very next morning, not even 24 hours later, I'm at the USS Tokyo Auto Auction House. There is a sea of cars, a mile and a half long, 17,000 vehicles. I'm walking through the rows, and there it is, a Toyota Origin. I get to walk around it, inspect it, open the suicide doors, look inside, start it up. At this point, I didn't know much about the Origin other than it was fascinating. Statistically, seeing two Toyota Origins in less than 24 hours isn't like winning the lottery, but it's beyond coincidence. Toyota only built 1,073 of them. They were never officially sold outside of Japan, and even in Japan, they aren't common. As with nearly every questionable automotive decision I've ever made, I chose to interpret this coincidence as divine intervention. This was not chance. It was a celestial command. Now, ever since that trip, I wanted one. I didn't want to just see another one someday or film one. I wanted my own. And once that thought kind of lodged itself in my brain, it didn't leave. So I start watching the Japanese auctions. Origins do come up, but not that often. The right ones come up even less often. A lot of the cars I saw, they were too expensive, too high mileage, too low mileage, too dinged up for something this rare. That last part really matters because the ordinary mechanical bits here, they're not the scary part on a Toyota Origin. Under the hood, Toyota's legendary, prolific, reliable workhorse, three-liter 2JZ-GE inline six engine. Yes, the Toyota super engine, or at least its naturally aspirated cousin. It makes 220 horsepower, unbelievably smooth, one of the most reliable engines Toyota ever built. The scary part, the Origin-specific trim, the chrome, the glass, the lights, weather stripping, body work. You can't get parts for this bespoke luxury car from AutoZone. Thus, my parameters were pretty strict. I'm looking for a car with 25, 45,000 miles, perfectly straight body, no dents, no dings, excellent mechanical condition, good chrome, no rust. I could polish paint, I'm pretty decent at detailing, it was my first job. But what I didn't want, damaged exterior trim, dented chrome, missing weather stripping. That's why I didn't buy the first one I saw at the auction house. As you can see in some of this video, had some wear and tear, some dings in the chrome. I also didn't want a museum piece with like seven, 8,000 miles and a price tag that made me afraid to drive it. Beggars can be choosers if they're patient enough. That patience paid off. My exporter, Aaron, from Bulldog Auto Japan, he calls me, says, James, today's the day. Not one, but two Toyota Origins crossing the block at USS Tokyo Auction House on the very same day. The Japanese auction system can get complicated, but for purposes of this story, all you really need to know is that used cars are graded from one to five. Five, like new, you almost never see them. A grade four, usually very, very nice used car. Four and a half, kind of between them. We had a four and a four and a half, both with about 30,000 miles, both good candidates on the same day. Remember, they only made 1,073 of these cars, so for two of them to go up on the same day and for them both to meet my specifications, I'm just saying, might be a sign from God. Aaron and I came up with a simple strategy. The grade four, that was gonna be the first one on the block. We would put in a disciplined bid on that car. If I want it, great. If somebody else wanted it more, then we would save the real firepower for the 4.5 because we're also down one bidder, right? Because whoever bought the first car wasn't probably going to be bidding against me on the second one. Either way, this was my chance. I was gonna bring one home. The grade four came up first and I told Aaron my absolute maximum number, which I can't share with you because it's confidential. There are a lot of secrecy issues with USS Tokyo Auction House. If I even shared the hammer down price on this video, it's possible that I could be banned from ever returning, dead serious. All you need to know is that Aaron had my absolute max number. I was asleep. You know, they're 13 hours ahead over there. When I wake up, I find out I had won this car by just 45,000 yen, which means that the other bidder had come up with just another $277. He would have beat me. That's the moment when the Toyota Origin stopped being a car I'd seen in Tokyo, stopped being hypothetical, theoretical. It started becoming my car. I'd spent years watching these things from a distance, waiting for the right one, passing on the wrong ones, wondering if I was ever going to actually pull the trigger. Then in the span of seconds, I had bought one of the rarest Toyotas ever built from an auction house all the way on the other side of the world. The price, not a steal, but still really good for one of these cars. By the time I added import fees, export fees, shipping, customs, brokerage, today's stupid tariffs, had probably a tick over 30 grand into the car. Not cheap, but it's also insane when you remember what this is. It's a rare Toyota luxury sedan, rear wheel drive, two JZN line six, suicide doors, 30,000 miles in excellent shape. More importantly, it was the right car. It was the right car for me, clean enough to look great on the road to be proud of, but dirty enough to actually drive without feeling guilty. I finally had found the Origin I wanted. I want it by the thinnest possible margin, but here's the worst part about it, waiting two, three months to find out what I had actually bought. The auction ended in the middle of February. The car finally arrived the first week of May. During those months, I probably looked over the auction sheet, the inspection report, half a dozen times. I spent hours Googling the car, reading everything I could find, and it wasn't until then that I realized something I had completely missed, kind of a big detail before bidding, the color. The Toyota Origin was only made in three colors, blue mica, which is the gorgeous dark navy typically associated with the Origin. The rarest color, you ready for this one? Light grayish blue mica metallic molybdenum. Seriously, I would just have called it denim blue. Finally, black, that's the color. Black, not jet black, not ebony black, not galaxy black, just black. I love the blue mica, but because it's such a deep navy blue, in photographs sometimes it's really hard to distinguish it from black. So looking at the auction pictures, I was sure that I'd bought a blue mica car, not making this up. I never even bothered checking the paint code before I bid. Weeks later, the car's on the boat, I'm obsessing over the car, I decode the VIN, there it was, code 202. My blue car was black. I wasn't that disappointed, looks great, right? The car was delivered to Jacksonville, shipped over to my buddy's shop in Pensacola so we could look it over. My very first impression was exactly the same as the first time I'd seen one in Tokyo, but I guess a little bit different. I couldn't believe how unique and beautiful this car was, but the difference, this time it was actually my car. Auction photos, they're never great. Car actually looked worse in person than it did in the auction listing, not because the body was bad, the body was laser straight, but black cars do have an unfortunate habit of telling on everyone who has ever touched them. The auction inspector noticed what he described as stains in the paint. What he really meant is that this origin was covered in microscopic swirl marks. Yeah, this is in pretty bad shape, so I'm gonna take the buffer to it and see what I can do. It looks fine from about this distance. After months parked at the port, stowed away in a ship, the car was caked in dust and dirt, so I didn't notice it at first. And I'm actually glad that I missed a spot washing back here so you guys could see this is what the paint looked like, that's how dirty it was whenever it came off the boat. But after I gave it its first proper wash, holy ----, it looked like somebody had washed this thing with their mother's loofah and dried it off with a Motel 6 bath towel. Not even bath towel, like the little towel they give you to put on the floor. In fact, I've never seen so many swirl marks in such a low mileage car. Engine, 31,000 miles. Paint, 131,000 miles. Fortunately, that turned out to be the biggest problem. The shop looked it over, said it was exactly what I expected, mechanically it was excellent. It basically needed an oil change and it was good to go. The paint, however, did need work. Far from perfect, but much better. My first weekend with the car, spent about nine hours over two days in the garage trying to bring this paint back to life with cutting agents and a dual action buffer. I started with polish, barely made a dent, stepped it up to compound, and then I polished it for hours. Is it perfect now? No, but in natural sunlight, outside of the harsh white LEDs of the garage, looks like pitch black oil slick on four wheels. The auction inspector noted that the wood steering wheel was cracked. Technically, he was right. This is actually common on Toyota wood grain wheels from this era because that wood grain veneer on the handle develops these little tiny cracks over time. I probably wouldn't have even noticed if it hadn't been mentioned in the auction sheet. Just looks like patina to me. This was the right car. Not perfect, but it had the things that I cared about. Straight body, beautiful chrome, no rust, low mileage, excellent mechanical condition, paint flaws I could improve myself. After watching Japanese auctions and waiting for the right car, I didn't end up with a museum piece or a project. I ended up with the exact kind of origin that I wanted. This video is about my origin. But why did Toyota, at the turn of the millennium, decide to build a retro style luxury sedan with suicide doors, wild body work, and a level of craftsmanship that made no economic sense? How did they do it? What did this car cost when it was new? That's where the origin gets much more interesting. In the next Jim Ports episode, we're going back to the beginning, the origin's origin. We're going to look at an original, get it, original, original Japanese dealer brochure and sell sheet that I bought in Japan for a hundred bucks. The craftsmen who built these by hand in the strange moment in Toyota history that produced one of the most fascinating cars Toyota ever built, if not ever built, period. The why of the origin is the real story. That's the real juice, because Toyota didn't build this car just to make money. They built it to make a statement and to carry on a dying tradition. Tune in to the next Jim Ports for the origin's origin story. Thanks for watching, guys. Take care.