In discussion of the birth of the Japanese automobile industry, most researchers and journalists obviously talk about the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Toyoda-Platt Agreement. It has been widely asserted that the one million yen that was received as a result of the Agreement provided Kiichiro Toyoda with the means to begin doing research on the automobile. But the historical evidence does not support this legendary story, and in many ways contradicts it. This paper aims to set the historical record straight.