Sakichi Toyoda created Japan's first power loom, which became the cornerstone of the Japanese textile machinery industry. To sell the looms, Toyoda built a company called Toyoda Shoten in the seaside city of Nagoya.

In 1935, his son, Kiichiro, expanded the family business to include automobiles. The first vehicle to be marketed by the fledgling automaker was the Model GI truck in 1935. But the road to automobile success was to be long. Auto manufacturing stopped at the plant during World War II.

After the war, while United States automakers were experiencing booming sales, Japanese industry was slowly rebuilding. The automakers of Tokyo laughed at the idea of cars being built at Toyoda's loom works, located in the Japanese equivalent of the boondocks, but the Toyoda family was not deterred. They worked with nearby supplier plants to produce the car as efficiently as possible.

When the company began exporting its car, they changed the spelling of the name to Toyota. They're not laughing any more. Today Toyota is Japan's biggest manufacturer and the world's third largest automaker, behind General Motors and Ford.