Junkyard Find: 1966 Toyota Crown Station Wagon
I spent a week in Sweden back in June, and I’m only now getting caught up on the photos I shot of interesting machinery at the Bloms Bilskrot yard, located in Söråker. We saw this ’63 Ford Taunus 17M a while back, there was this straight-outta-1978-San Diego customized ’69 Econoline van, and now we’re going to admire one of the earliest Toyotas sold in Europe.
The S40 Toyota Crown was built from 1962 through 1967. I’m not sure of the exact year of this one, but it appears that the earlier European Crowns were badged as Toyopets. Since this one has Toyota badging, I’m assuming it’s a 1966 or 1967.
With a pushrod 3R and well under 100 horses under the hood, this big (for Europe) wagon must have required a lot of patience on the part of the driver.
Lichens and moss have colonized the interior, and the missing windshield provides access for birch leaves and pine needles to create rich mulch. Anything soft in this car’s interior is a complete write-off.
These cars were sold in the United States as well, but they were extremely rare in the 1960s and close to nonexistent now.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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OMG. I cannot believe it. Tiny Söråker, my old home town. Just north of Sundsvall. Middle of nowhere and not much to do except hang out at Blom's place. Did you have fun. Tell me that at the very least you visited the Kulturmagasinet in Sundsvall or had the local Surströmming!
Looks like a Japanese interpretation of the Ford Falcon wagon though they were basically of the same time period development-wise.