34th Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races

The Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races presented by Toyota paddock contains many cars that once raced in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, better known as the Can-Am. One that might have been here, had development on the car not stopped and its racing career halted, is the Toyota 7.

The Toyota 7 was a Group 7 racing machine that first targeted the Japanese GP and, had all gone according to plan, was destined for America to race against the McLarens and Porsches in Can-Am. Much of the car's development and racing came at the hands of one of the drivers racing in this weekend's Toyota Race of Legends, Vic Elford.

"It was a very good car," says Elford. "I spent two months there and we finished off the whole program with the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji - this was 1969 - but I spent two months developing the car because they had two chassis they were looking at. One was a spaceframe that they built themselves and the other one was a monocoque built by Trojan in England. Trojan built the monocoques for the McLaren customer cars. So I spent two months evaluating those two and then I drove in the race. I actually drove the monocoque one."

The car had some success in Japan, but the speed of the cars was not a good match for Japanese racing circuits at the time.

"The plan originally was for both Nissan and Toyota - they were both working along the same lines - to bring the cars to America in the Can-Am; but by the end of 1969, especially at Mount Fuji circuit, which used to be horribly dangerous, they had so many drivers killed driving those cars, the big fast cars, that the Japan federation said, 'Stop! No more Group 7 racing in Japan.' And so the whole program, both Nissan and Toyota, just came to a complete dead stop, which was a shame, because they were good," Elford says.

"The Nissans were probably a little bit faster because they had a bigger engine. The Toyota 7 engine was only 5 liter, and the Nissan was a 6.3, but the Toyota was a much nicer car to drive. " The next step in development was for Toyota to add a turbocharger to its engine, but that configuration was never tested in a race because of the cancellation of the 1971 Japanese GP.

"It's a shame we never came to America with them," laments Elford. "It would have been wonderful; it would have been very special for Toyota to come here with those cars 40 years ago."