[h=2]1936 Toyota AA[/h] 1936 Toyota AA | Toyota UK


This is where the world’s largest automaker got its start: the art deco-influenced AA. Built from 1936 to 1943, Toyota (then known as Toyoda) built just over 1,400 of these luxury cars. Unfortunately, the majority were thought to be destroyed during World War II, with the remainder lost in the years after. Toyota was so convinced the AA was extinct that in 1986, it built a replica to display for its 50th-anniversary celebrations.
That’s what makes this find so extraordinary. No one knows how the lone surviving AA ended up in Russia. But in 2008, the family of a Siberian farmer put this car up for sale. Experts believe the AA was used by Japanese bureaucrats in occupied Manchuria, then taken west as war spoils after the Soviets invaded. Since the late ’40s, it was used as a field car on a farm. After paying an undisclosed sum (which the sellers were reportedly very happy with), the car sits in as-found condition at the Louwman Museum in the Netherlands.