EVENT: 50 Years Toyota Switzerland exhibition at Emil Frey Classic cars

This year “Emil Frey”, the holding which also owns toyota switzerland is celebrating 50 Years of toyota Switzerland. They have a special “classic Car” center in a beautifully restored old industrial building.

Normally they have changing exhibitions from the various brands they import, but this time around one floor was dedicated to Toyotas of all ages. A reason to go, me and my buddy Daniel thought, and hopped into his awesome RHD Prodrive P1 Impreza Coupe:

After entrance there is a small shop with clothes and various goodies celebrating all their brands:

There is a “used car” shop too (with some nice classics) but i’ll focus on that in a special installment, since it’s more about exotics and less about japanese cars.

In the entrance hall this first ever importted Toyota Corona with a picture of Emil frey himself in the back greeted visitors and let them know about the special exhibition:

After paying the 10 bucks entrance fee you get this booklet with the whole history and some background information about how toyota came to switzerland and the whole exhibition. really interresting and funny how a swiss guy learned about a brand called toyota in Africa, flew to japan and after twoo weeks of negotiating goth the swiss importer of the brand, which than became one of the most successfull business stories in switzerland…

In the ground floor there is the standard rotating exhibition with all kind of cars, before i start with the toyotas i’d like to point out some other rarities we saw there first:
A subaru Impreza Rallye car, which was raced in various races in switzerland:

And one of the first Subaru Wagons, in absolutely mint condition. As it seems it’s still road registered. What a stunner!

After rushing through the mostly british cars in the first floor, we were finally greeted with this in the second level:

And then suddenly: BOOM!

A legit Yamaha Equipped Toyota 2000GT. The one million dollar car in all it’s stunning beauty! What a machine!

Next to it was this less rare but not less attractive Celica GT:

We were not sure what to expect before we went there, but it was definitely not dissapointing. We drooled over this absolutely mint FJ

And remembered when we were kids seeing the awesomeness of an 80ies Hilux with matching orange striped decal package too 🙂

Or how about a pickup a bit more oldschool? This would be the perfect shop hauler i think, if it just wasn’t that rare and nice 🙂

Some more toyota pickups. Remembers me about my childhood in L.A. 🙂

The center stage was reserved for this beutiful old Celica racecar.

The decal says Swiss champion winner 1976

Finally some overfenders where they fit 🙂

It wasnt all about the old cars either, there was this absolutely mint and low mileage manual transmission targa top JZA80 Supra MKIV too. rare to see one in original state these days…

And then an absolutely mint AE86 corolla too. the stickers hints it has been on the Nürburgring once in a while 🙂

Next to it was it’s rear enginned brother, the AW11 MR-2. Absolutely love the boxiness of these 😀

Right behind it was the Bubble-styled Sports 800 which is a fun little roadster and then right behind it a car that also remembered my about the soccer-mom cars back in the day 🙂