Toyota models

Toyota began in 1937 when Kiichiro Toyoda spun a car operation out of his family's loom business in what is now Toyota City. The early cars were unremarkable; the discipline behind them was not. The production system Toyota built over the following decades, centred on cutting waste and fixing problems at the source, became the template that much of global manufacturing later copied.

The brand grew into one of the largest carmakers in the world on a simple reputation: the cars start, and they keep starting. The Corolla and Hilux turned that reliability into volume, and the 1997 Prius proved Toyota could lead rather than follow, putting hybrids on the road years before rivals took them seriously.

The knock on Toyota is that it plays it safe, and there's some truth to that. But for a buyer who wants a car that holds its value and rarely surprises them, that caution is the whole point. From the workaday Corolla to the Land Cruiser and the Lexus luxury arm, the range is broad enough that there is usually a Toyota for the job, and it will almost certainly still be running long after the loan is paid off.