HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Toyota MiniAce was a small utility vehicle built by
Toyota is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...
from November 1967 until November 1975. It shared many parts with the
Toyota Publica The is a small car manufactured by the Japanese company Toyota from 1961 until 1978. Conceived as a family car to fulfill the requirements of the Japanese Government's "national car concept", it was the smallest Toyota car during that period a ...
, especially the Publica P20 Pickup. In Japan, it was sold through the '' Toyota Corolla Store'' and ''Toyota Auto Store'' networks. Because it shares many parts with the popular Toyota Publica and the highly collectable Toyota Sports 800 most MiniAces have been used for parts and very few survive. Its exterior dimensions and engine displacement, while very small, do not conform to "
kei car Kei car is the smallest category of Japanese expressway-legal motor vehicles. The term ''kei'' is a shortening of , (kanji: ), which translates to English as "light vehicle" (). With restricted dimensions and engine specifications, owners ...
" Japanese government regulations.


History

The concept originally possessed a particularly small turning circle of only . It entered the market in November 1967, as a truck or as a panel van. Priced low, in consideration of its payload, the MiniAce sold well, especially due to its compliance to the Japanese annual
road tax Road tax, known by various names around the world, is a tax which has to be paid on, or included with, a motorised vehicle to use it on a public road. National implementations Australia All states and territories require an annual vehicle regist ...
obligation. True success followed once the MiniAce Van (UP100V) and MiniAce Coach, a seven-seater minibus, were added in August 1968. Soon, though, more modern challengers like Mitsubishi's Delica began whittling away at the market share of the MiniAce. Its toughest competitor, the 1969 Datsun Sunny Cab received a water-cooled 1.2 liter engine for 1972. The MiniAce's 2U-B engine offered only at 4,600 rpm, which was enough for a claimed top speed of . Nonetheless, Toyota's 1967 engagement with
Daihatsu is a Japanese automobile manufacturer headquartered in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. One of the oldest surviving Japanese internal combustion engine manufacturers, the company was known for building three-wheeled vehicles and off-road vehicle ...
meant that Toyota was to relinquish this portion of the market, and no more serious investments in the MiniAce were made. After December 1969, manufacture was transferred from Toyota's Takaoka plant and was now shared between Hino, Daihatsu, and the Fuji Auto Body Co., Ltd. which made the bodies. In the early seventies the MiniAce received a very light facelift, mainly consisting of a plastic shield with a "Toyota" script located just beneath the front windshield. As the air-cooled U engine would have a hard time passing new, stricter emissions standards for 1976, production was halted in November 1975. Although the MiniAce had become too small and spartan for the now more sophisticated Japanese consumers, it was still a strong seller in other Asian markets. The larger LiteAce and all new TownAce took over, with Daihatsu's Hijet covering the lower end of the segment. In December 2011, Toyota returned to this market segment with the introduction of the Toyota Pixis Van and Truck, rebadged Daihatsu Hijets.


References

{{Toyota road cars timeline, 1955-1984 MiniAce 1960s cars 1970s cars Rear-wheel-drive vehicles Vehicles introduced in 1967 Cars powered by boxer engines Minibuses Microvans Cab over vehicles Cars powered by 2-cylinder engines