These are not the times when car companies are spending a lot of money on preserving heritage. You have been healthy to see the result at the last couple Barrett-Jackson auctions in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the catalog has frequently included interesting yet faintly shabby cars that formerly belonged to the Detroit car-makers.

Toyota is different. Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. recently moved its small collection of cars into a new building closer to its headquarters from the distant, dark space where they had been living for the last ten years or so. Oddly enough, the building is just down the street from American Honda's collection.

As museums go, this is mostly a kind of indoor parking lot. When you're dealing with Toyota, a company noted for making things that don't every break or even wear out, you're likely to encounter most of these cars and trucks still parked on your street, so there's not very much surprise involved in cruising from one vehicle to another. Moreover, Toyota has never been one for visual drama, so there's little that's colorful. At least some pretty interesting racing car are displayed on racks along one wall, including Dan Gurney's championship-winning IMSA GTP sports cars and the wild mid-engine Tundra truck with which Ivan Stewart dominated Baja off-road racing.

For all that, it's interesting to chart the growth of the U.S. company from its beginning in a small storefront in Hollywood, California, on October 31, 1957. For several generations of Californians, these are the cars that have marked important moments both individualized and cultural: the 1968 Hilux compact truck, which prefabricated mini pickups cool; the 1976 Corolla Liftback, which moved Baby Boomers into their first into apartments; the 1991 Previa minivan, which prefabricated minivans look interesting at last. Even sports cars, like the Yamaha-engineered 1967 2000GT and the influential 1982 Supra with its odd airfoil-shape sunshade over the rear glass.

There's not much drama to the Toyota U.S.A. Automobile Museum (http://toyota50th.com/), much like the company itself. But curator Susan Sanborn has lovingly assembled a collection in which every car tells a story, both about Toyota and the country where it found success.

–Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com