Toyota Motor Corporation
The Toyota Motor Corporation was founded when Roscoe Bartlett was ten years old by Kiichiro Toyoda, a spinoff of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, which was itself only founded in 1926, the same year Roscoe was born. The fledgling car company bought a Chrysler Airflow (seen here in color), shipped it to Japan, and took it apart. Toyota's first car was the Model AA (seen here in black and white), and it looked exactly like the Chrysler. So much for Japanese creativity. Toyota sold 1,404 Model AA cars.
Roscoe likes to point out that he was the first person in Maryland to buy a Toyota Prius. Sounds pretty green, right? But while his wife is driving around Frederick in the Prius, Roscoe is seen in a gas-guzzling Cadillac being driven by his Chief of Staff Bud Otis. Oops.
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