When the first Toyota Toyopet Crowns landed on the docks in Los Angeles in the late summer of 1957, no one on hand realized they were watching history unfold. Six decades later, Japanese automakers are well entrenched in the U.S. market, with Toyota, Honda, Subaru and Nissan (and formerly, Mazda and Mitsubishi) all currently operating manufacturing plants on U.S. soil. The reach of the Japanese auto industry goes well beyond these shores, and on Tuesday, March 22, journalist Peter Lyons will present How Japanese Cars Changed the World: An Insider's Look, at the Japan Society offices in New York City.

The Toyopet Crown may have launched the Japanese auto industry in the United States, but ironically it very nearly killed it as well. The initial cars shipped to California had undergone no testing outside of Japan, and as Wanda James writes in Driving to America, their performance was not up to U.S. expectations. Driving on the freeways of Southern California, the cars were unable to achieve, let alone maintain, a safe speed. Hills caused overheating issues, but perhaps worse was that the Toyopet Crown's brakes weren't sufficient to hold the car on steep grades. Even the vibration from the car's engine, attributed to its three main bearing design, proved unacceptable to those given test drives.

How Japanese car companies gained a foothold in the North American auto market.