Dutch Toyota wins ‘best of show’ award at Retromobile 2025

Toyota Sports 800: best of show

Museum curator Sjoerd van Bilsen says the following in conversation with AutoRAI.nl: “It is special to show the for the general public the Sports 800 on the Toyota France stand, to which the visitors react enthusiastically. After all, for many it was the first introduction to the cool open sports coupe. That the jury from Retromobile didn’t fail to notice the Sports 800’s presence either makes it even more fun for us guardians of automotive history. And then the jury also praised the example as “best of show” in the category “best preserved post-war car. We are honored to receive this award at a show like Retromobile, where old and new, unknown and unloved, enthusiast cars and racing history meet. Great that the very compact Sports 800 steps out of the shadow of those hundreds of racing and sports cars.”

About the 1965 Toyota Sports 800

The small Toyota Sports 800 (1965) is the very first sports car built by Toyota. The two-door targa coupe was designed by Shozo Sato and measures 3.58 meters in length. It is powered by a 790 cm³ twin-cylinder boxer engine with an output of 45 hp. However, thanks to its low weight of 580 kg, the Sports 800 performed remarkably well (top speed: 155 km/h). During the 1967 24-hour race on the Fuji circuit, a Sports 800 was flagged third, behind two Toyotas 2000 GT. Of the Sports 800, 3,131 were produced exclusively for the Japanese market. There, the Sports 800 was given the nickname “Yota-Hachi” (short for “Toyota 8”).