Che Guevara became an iconic figure for left-wing students the world over; a giant step (more of a bounce really) was taken on the moon; Dylan went electric and Decca Records rejected the Beatles, saying ‘we don’t like their sound’. Paul Kantner of the band Jefferson Airplane famously said: "If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there." But Toyota were.
This was the decade that Toyota announced its arrival in the UK with the launch of the Corona in 1965. The effect of the Toyota Production System (TPS) - (still in use today and copied with varying degrees of success by many others, including the NHS) was also beginning to be felt at this time. The TPS showed that building quality ("right first time" as it became known), was cheaper in the long run. The simplest example of this came from the company’s founder Eiji Toyoda, who invented a machine that stopped automatically when it detected a fault, thus saving waste and increasing productivity. Today’s equivalent is the Andon Cord that hangs over both sides of every production line. If anyone spots a problem, they pull the cord, which immediately stops that part of the line. These cords get pulled every few minutes somewhere in the factory, and when they are, instead of a siren, a cheery song is played. Back to the cars: in 1967, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, producer of Ian Fleming’s Bond films, fell for Toyota’s fabulous 150bhp two-seater coupe, the 2000GT and cast it in his Japanese location epic, You Only Live Twice. The same year, a little less glamorously perhaps, Pride & Clarke, Toyota’s sole UK importer, became Toyota GB.
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