To tell the story of Toyota, we have to go back to the early 20th century and a
company called the Toyoda Loom Works. It was out of this company that Toyota was
born, with the production of the first motor in 1937.
Initially, the company was named after its founders, the Toyoda family, but this
was soon changed, the word Toyota being easier to write in Japanese.
It will come as no surprise, then, that the first Toyota logo was a stylised combination
of the Japanese Katana, or characters, for “TO,” “YO,” and “TA.”