A 1967 Toyota 2000GT, widely considered to be the first seriously collectible Japanese car ever made, will be offered during RM Auctions’ sale of the Don Davis Collection in Fort Worth on April 27. Offered without reserve, the sinuous sports car, one of the first of 337 produced, is the same creamy yellow as the 2000GT driven by Sean Connery in the ‘67 Bond classic You Only Live Twice. 
Compared favorably at the time with the Porsche 911, the 2000GT remains an automotive icon and is expected to bring in as much as $850,000, a benchmark for the model. Curiously enough, the car driven by Connery had to be custom-made without a roof—seems the Scottish actor was a little too tall to squeeze into the low-slung coupe as is…
life:
LIFE celebrates the man’s career with a series of previously unpublished photos from 1966, made by LIFE’s Bill Ray. Ray remembers that Caine “seemed to be a magnet, without ever lifting a finger. And that was another part of the laid-back thing. He seemed to have perfected a way to make things look easy, and so things became easy. See the photos here.
Pictured: Michael Caine lifts girlfriend Natalie Wood off the ground, 1966.
(Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
One cool cat.
