Although I love them,
this isn't the place to
read about

or

There's lots of writing on the bottom of this car, but I can't find any background -- I even tried tracking down the Australian patent number. The bottom says "Not recommended for children under the age of 36 months, VK Commodore, AFCAR pat no 445207, produced for AFCAR Australia by Planet Plastics, Melb Vic."

This is exactly why I put up this site. Christian Goetz provided information on this elusive model. Check on the listing for Plomur.

This isn't my usual model, but it means a lot to me because my partner gave it to me about 16 years ago. It's about 9 inches long, made out of steel with a coating that looks more gold than these pictures show. It appears to be a cigarette holder (the unfiltered kind), with a place for matches. I've had the bottom translated, and it says "Toyota Truck Sales 15th Anniversary, Toyota Automobile Sales Corporation." The front logo says "Toyopet." I assume that this was some sort of premium within Toyota in Japan (otherwise the bottom would be in English). It's interesting that it's a car when it's celebrating truck sales. Anybody have any more information?

July 3, 2008: I received an interesting email from Hiro in Japan: "... Until early '80s, Many Japanese car company usually prepared these cigarette holder for new purchasers. But this one is exclusive for Toyota employee, originally came with the box made of paulownia wood.

The name of the car is "Toyopet Sedan Type SFN", produced from 1952. Most of SFN are used as "Kamikaze Taxi", infamous for reckless driving of
cab drivers show off high power for that days. "Toyopet" is a kind of official nickname used for normal cars of Toyota
until early '60s. So we call old one as "Toyopet Crown".

Hiro also posited the reason for the use of a car model to commemorate trucks -- because the chassis of the SFN was a version of a truck chassis! He also sent along some pictures of another cigarette holder from an auction site.

Toyopet cigarette holder with box
Toyopet cigarette holder open

Copyright 2007 by Keith Bickford. All rights reserved. No portion of this site may be reproduced without written permission.