The afternoon light slipped through the tall glass of the Milton Martin Toyota showroom in Gainesville, Georgia, catching the polished chrome of a car that looked as if it had just rolled off a 1970 assembly line. There it sat, a compact 1970 Toyota Corona, its bodywork gleaming with a quiet dignity among the sleek modern Camrys and RAV4s. I had come for something routine—a service appointment I think—but the little sedan stopped me cold. It didn’t demand attention. It simply was—a survivor holding court in the place where its story began.
I must have lingered longer than I realized, because one of the dealership’s employees—a man who carried the easy authority of someone who’d spent years among these machines—noticed my interest and walked over. He smiled the way people do when they know they’re about to share something worth hearing.
“That’s the first one,” he said, nodding toward the Corona. “The very first Toyota this dealership ever sold.”
He spoke the date as if it were family lore—because it was—January 22, 1970. The buyer was a local man named Ralph McCrary, a young educator from Gainesville who would go on to spend more than three decades teaching and leading schools across north Georgia. The salesman was Merritt Martin, brother of the founder and the first employee Milton Martin had hired back in 1961 when the whole enterprise was still just a used-car lot downtown promising “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” At the time, imported Japanese cars were still a hard sell in Georgia. Milton had taken a leap of faith that year, becoming only the third Toyota dealer in the state. This Corona was the opening chapter.
Milton Martin Sr. grew up the son of Hall County sharecroppers during the Great Depression, one of six children whose first names all began with “M” (His parents had a sense of humor too). The hard years shaped him into a man with fierce work ethic, a generosity nature, and a humorous spirit. He sold produce and rabbits at roadside stands as a boy, cut yards for extra money, left college for business school, served as a Navy bookkeeper, and in 1950 began working for a local car dealer, C.V. Nalley—which was the spark that lit his passion for the auto business and everything that followed. That same year, on Christmas Eve, he married Damaris Evans. Together they raised six children while he built the business. Today, three generations of Martins still carry that passion forward, treating customers and employees like family through honesty, integrity, and quiet community service.
As the story progressed with the employee’s telling, the service department repeatedly buzzed my phone to let me know my car was ready. But I ignored the interruptions, caught up in the story unfolding before me.
Years later, the employee continued, an opportunity presented itself. The car—long out of daily service, weathered by time—became available again from the original owners’ circle. The Martins did not hesitate. They bought it back, brought it home, and set their own technicians to work. What followed was a careful restoration, a labor of patience and respect that returned the Corona to the condition it had known on that January day more than half a century earlier. Now it sits in the showroom not as merchandise, but as a living marker of where the family business began.
What makes this car special is not horsepower or rarity from a collector’s perspective. It is the unbroken thread it represents. In 1970 the Corona was Toyota’s practical answer to American roads—reliable, efficient, unpretentious—exactly the kind of vehicle that would quietly win over skeptical buyers during the fuel-conscious years ahead. For the Martin family it was something more personal: the first proof that their gamble on an imported brand could work. Merritt handed the keys to Ralph McCrary; decades later the dealership reclaimed those keys and restored the car so the story would not fade.
Standing there, listening to the employee’s quiet telling, I felt the weight of ordinary history made tangible. A teacher buying his new car. A brother selling it. A family deciding, years on, that this particular machine still mattered enough to bring home and make whole again. The Corona does not need to move under its own power to travel. It carries the beginning of Milton Martin Toyota—Georgia’s oldest continuously operated Toyota dealership—forward every day it sits in that showroom light, a small, steadfast reminder that some firsts are worth remembering.
Note from the author: This is local history that I enjoy bringing to light. I was not paid to write this. I wrote it because it’s true and in my opinion, worth remembering. I’ve bought three cars from Milton Martin Toyota since moving to Gainesville and each time appreciated the straight forward way they treated me. I’ve purchased more than 25 vehicles over the years, and found that dealing with Milton Martin Toyota was one of the few positive experiences I’ve had in all those trades.
