VOLUME 1 FEATURES
10 MIN READ
It was 1957: the Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik 1, Elvis topped the Billboard charts, and Australia became the first nation to start trading with Japan after World War II. The Japanese motor industry was also at a crucial point: it had increased production after a slow post-war era and was ready to begin exporting vehicles around the world.
When entries for the seventh Mobilgas Round Australia Rally opened, the Japanese consulate in Melbourne sensed an opportunity to shake the stigma attached to Japanese consumer goods, and increase goodwill between the two countries. They sent a request for a carmaker back home to defy the sentiment of the time, and enter the event. Toyota responded, becoming the first Japanese manufacturer to compete in an international motorsport contest: a contest that transcended all ordinary limits of rally racing as we now know it.
The Toyopet Crown RSD. Image courtesy of Hal Moloney.
THE CIRCUIT
The Mobilgas Round Australia Rally was a savage circumnavigation that went from Melbourne to Adelaide, across the Nullarbor to Perth, up to Darwin, across to Brisbane, down to Sydney, to Canberra, and back to Melbourne. It was the longest endurance race in the world, with roads so rough it was referred to as 'The World’s Cruellest Rally'. 95% of the circuit was unpaved. In some stretches of the outback, there was no road at all.
This was the type of challenge that car manufacturers steeled themselves for; it was the ultimate stress test for their work. To enter, at least 1000 examples of the car must have been built and no modifications – including reinforcing – were allowed. When one team added a ‘roo bar’ to the front of their vehicle, they were firmly shut down. The cars needed to represent the products available to the general public for purchase.
Most cars that were sent to compete would return from battle wounded and scarred. But if your car could survive this race, it could survive anything. 86 teams took up the challenge in 1957, lining up opposite Royal Park Zoo on August 12 to start the race. Only 52 teams would make it back.
THE TEAM
The team that represented Toyota was so unlikely, it could be the stuff of comedy gold. Two Toyota staff members in their twenties – Kunio Kaminomura and Kojiro Kondo – were chosen to engineer and drive, while Lindsay Hedley – an Australian navigator in his early 40s – rounded out the trio. Hedley had competed in the event twice before and was recruited to the team by Mobilgas. He spoke no Japanese, Kondo only spoke a little English, Kaminomura almost none.
Kondo reflected on the recruitment process years later, saying he was simply “instructed to go to Australia” for the rally. He didn’t even know what the word 'rally' meant. It’s hard to imagine now, in a world where competitive sportspeople are optimised to within an inch of their life – where car racing is largely a battle of efficiency more than anything else – that something so raw, so untamed, so uncertain, could have a place on the global stage.
The historical records of Toyota’s preparation show something akin to an unorthodox high-school science project, whose makers never opened the textbook. While most teams would be doing long-distance shakedown runs across Australia to condition their cars and their teams, the Toyota team built a test course in the mountains north of Tokyo, designed to mimic Australia’s geography, climate, and culture. Meanwhile, Kaminomura and Kondo were instructed to start eating bread instead of rice as part of their training.
But for all the ways this approach might sound to us now, it was serious. This was an opportunity to build respect for Japan, and the thousands of people who came to see Kaminomura and Kondo parade the streets of Tokyo and Yokohama, believed in this future.
Kunio Kaminomura, Kojiro Kondo, and Lindsay Hedley receiving gifts at a control point. Image courtesy of Hal Moloney.
THE CAR
The car they took was a Toyopet Crown RSD: a four-door saloon with a 1.5 litre engine and 48hp. When the Crown was released in Japan in 1955 it was largely adopted as a taxi, and the model that Toyota sent to Australia was the same as what was being sold in their Tokyo showrooms. The Crown was shipped from Yokohama to Sydney, but it was so unusual in the Australian market that all external fittings, including wipers, lamps, and radio antenna, had been stolen by the time it arrived at the port.
It was also the same car and the same year that Toyota first began trading in America. The Crown had 50% thicker steel than the average American car at the time and was given the nickname 'Baby Cadillac' by the press. And while this temporarily boosted sales, the Americans ultimately found the Crown too slow, too heavy, too noisy, too unstable, and too shaky.
But the Toyopet Crown was never designed for American highways; it had been designed for the muddy, slow, unpaved Japanese roads. And so even at 1,700kg – making it one of the slowest cars in the field at the 1957 Mobilgas Rally – the Toyota team stood a small chance of survival.
THE RACE
Rally racing in the 50s was all about endurance and reliability. In other words, survival. It threw humans into the wild, armed with only the tools they’d built, and wished them good luck.
The Mobilgas Rally covered nearly 1,000 kilometres each day – longer than Melbourne to Sydney on the Hume. Competitors lost points for being late at control points and for the condition of their car at certain stages. The circuit took teams through no man’s land and back, without a support crew or backup vehicles to bail them out of trouble.
The outback was unlike anything Kaminomura and Kondo were used to, and even with Hedley on the maps, the team took a couple of wrong turns in the disorienting sameness of the outback. A single entry from the Toyopet log read: “We are fighting speed and sand”. Kaminomura would later reflect on the fine red dust that turned their hair and their eyebrows red, as they removed handfuls of it from the engine air filter each day.
While many of the competing teams had full-service crews, the Toyota team did all repairs themselves. It’s also reported that they stopped to help their rivals repair broken distributors, to donate a tin of oil to a Porsche that had a leak, and to rescue a Simca that had gone down a bank.
They battled gravel, sharp stones, and rocks that made cornering dangerous and shredded their tyres. They rattled along bone-dry roads that choked the car with dust. They braked for wandering cattle, kangaroos, horses, donkeys, and buffalo – colliding three times. They came across sudden creek crossings that could flood the ignition if hit at speed. They lay their right foot in, the Toyopet overheating, to avoid getting bogged. They carried everything they needed, including food, water, fuel, and spares. Legend has it that some teams even carried explosives to clear debris from the road.
They drove through the day; they drove through the night.
Kaminomura and Kondo took three-hour shifts and the team slept mostly in the car, driving without navigation when Hedley napped. Kaminomura said they became so used to the motion of the car that it became difficult to sleep in a bed.
More than a race, this was the frontier of motorcar development. When teams passed through towns, they were greeted as heroes by the local residents who lined the roads and waited for hours under the Australian sun to see them. “We started late at most points”, remembers Hedley. “People wanted to see the engine and so I spent a lot of time opening the hood and explaining things”.
A crowd gathers to see the Toyota team. Image courtesy of Hal Moloney.
THE FINISH
On 8 September 1957, Kaminomura, Kondo, and Hedley crossed the line in 47th position. They outlasted 34 teams who didn’t make it to claim third in the overseas entry class.
The Age reported a 40,000 strong crowd who showed up at the Royal Park finish line, who had to be held back by police cars, motorcycles, and mounted troopers as they rushed to congratulate the drivers who emerged from this gruelling, 19-day journey. The story reported that “many cars showed scars of the adventurous trip. Many were short of windows and others were tied with string, wire, and rope”.
The Toyopet Crown RSD made it over the line with a damaged sump, a bent tie rod, a broken intake valve stem, and misaligned wheels. But it had made it with no major mechanical problems, and it taught Japanese car manufacturers a whole lot. It had become clear that the main weakness of their cars was lack of power, with Kaminomura suggesting that if Japanese road conditions were improved, manufacturers could build lighter cars with better power to weight ratios.
A replica of the Toyopet Crown RSD proudly on display at the Toyota Automobile Museum in Nagoya. Image courtesy of Hal Moloney.
THE LEGACY
Kaminomura and Hedley returned to the Mobilgas rally in 1958, alongside two more Toyota teams which included a husband and wife duo. Kondo would later reflect on his experience in Australia in 1957, and how it had made an indelible imprint on his life. It had been a huge challenge, and nothing that came after felt insurmountable.
Undeniable in all accounts and photos from the event is how much pure joy the race seemed to bring. Motorsports, as most sports are now, are so highly polished it can be hard to find the story. We dress things up with halftime shows, we media train athletes to perform off the track and off the field, and the opportunities to show a new kind of brilliance beyond shaving off a few seconds or winning back-to-back-to-back are getting harder to find.
But here were people voyaging into the wild to write an archetypal story, to make the unknown known – creating a lightning strike moment that would illuminate a new chapter for Toyota.
With thanks to Hal Moloney, for permission to publish the photographs and for providing the historical records used to write this story.
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