Archive for Toyota

Apparently The Edge Daily’s reporter had misinterpreted UMW Toyota Motor’s Managing Director David Chen’s statements at the Kuala Lumpur International Automotive Conference last week.

There is no plan to manufacture any Toyota models in Malaysia. Toyota is just designating Malaysia as one of it’s regional production centers for certain models. Toyota currently uses Thailand as it’s passenger car and pick-up truck center and Indonesia for MPVs and SUVs. Malaysia will be the production center for some models, but only for assembly and the first would be the van that is being exported.

Perhaps there was some confusion with terms like manufacturing and assembling. This is the problem with mainstream news sources that are not automotive news-focused, most of the time their journalists do not have a full understanding on how the industry works, and the jargon involved.

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UMW Toyota to manufacture cars locally

Source: Chips Yap

UMW Toyota Motor Sdn Bhd is taking it’s operations here to the next step. It will start manufacturing cars here in Malaysia, with the first roll-out expected in 18 months time.

Toyota’s sales success of around 7000 cars a month has reached a milestone where it will begin to be financially feasible to manufacture vehicles locally instead of importing CKD kits and merely assembling them here in Malaysia. These Malaysian-manufactured Toyota cars would have over 60% local content. Toyota officials did not mention which models would be manufactured locally, but it is likely the high volume models like the Toyota VIOS which accounts for 1,500 units of the 7,000 monthly sales figure.

There is a future possibility of price reductions for the locally manufactured vehicles from cost-savings from its operations, but this is just a possibility. UMW Toyota is also exporting a vehicle assembled locally to Thailand beginning next Monday. The model exported will be a van model.

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Toyota has released specification and prices for the Toyota Yaris on their website. The Toyota Yaris comes in two trim levels, the Toyota Yaris 1.5G and the Toyota Yaris 1.5S. Let’s have a look at the specifications and most importantly price of the latest hatchback on our shores.

Click here to read the rest of Toyota Yaris 1.5G and 1.5S in Malaysia

Sales for the Toyota Prius in April 2006 has dropped nearly 25% compared to April 2005, the same time period last year. Toyota sold 7,500 Toyota Prius hybrids in April 2006, compared to 11,345 in April 2005. Sales for the year 2006 to date is also 10% less compared to the same time period in 2005.

This drop has been touted as a reflection of the public’s declining interest in hybrid cars (Carlos Ghosn would be smug about this), but Toyota says the drop in sales is because of a production shortage, nota decline in the vehicle’s popularity.

Jim Lentz, group vice president and general manager for Toyota said to the media “If I had the vehicles, we could do 250,000 this year. We’re going to end April with just a four-day supply of Prius, and I don’t see that situation improving until later this year“. Toyota’s estimate of 250,000 is more than double the amount of Toyota Prius hybrids sold in 2005 (107,897 cars) but looks like whether it’s production issues or lower popularity, the figure won’t be achieved this year.

Toyota Modellista has released a special 100 unit run of the Toyota Mark X. It comes with a Modellista bodykit and a Tom’s Supercharger bolted on to the 3GR-FE 3.0 V6 engine. I suppose the engine can be called a 3GR-FZE now? Not really sure. The special edition car is called the Toyota Mark X Special Version. Boy, it must have took them ages to crack their heads to think of that name. More photos of this hot white monster after the jump!

Click here to read the rest of Toyota Mark X Special Version

The Toyota Mark X is the successor to the popular Toyota Mark II. The Toyota Mark II has enjoyed sales figures of 4.8 million since it’s first incarnation was introduced back in 1968. The Toyota Mark II is also known as the Toyota Chaser in Japan.

Click here to read the rest of Toyota Mark X

We all know the Toyota Yaris is coming soon to our shores. There have been sightings of the little hatchback on trailers being delivered somewhere, and UMW Toyota has even registered the domain name yaris.com.my. But what’s important is how much will it cost?

I had a look at the CBU gazetted price list released by the Customs a while ago and decided to try calculating the price of a Toyota Yaris with Malaysia’s awesome best in the world ever taxes slapped on.

Toyota Yaris – RM41,000
+ import duty (RM2,050) = RM43,050
+ excise duty (RM32,287.50) = RM75,337.50
+ sales tax (RM7,533.75) = RM82,871.25

Toyota Yaris High-grade – RM42,500
+ import duty (RM2,125) = RM44,625
+ excise duty (RM33,468.75) = RM78,093.75
+ sales tax (RM7,809.38) = RM85,903.13

I’ve done the calculations assuming the Toyota Yaris will be a CBU from Thailand, not Japan. Of course, this does not include whatever profit UMW Toyota has to make from the sale of the car. So, how much do you think UMW Toyota will sell it for? And do you think our Toyota Yaris will have a Super-CVT transmission?

Related posts:
Toyota Yaris Hatchback Spyshots
Toyota Vitz (Yaris)

We’ve just seen one of the first effects of the new National Automotive Policy. UMW has just announced it’s passanger cars will be cheaper by 5.6% to 11% with the new tax structure, however MPVs like the Toyota Avanza and the Toyota Innova will be more expensive from now on.

The Toyota VIOS will be 5.6% cheaper, while the Toyota Corolla Altis will be 7% cheaper. Commercial vehicles like the Toyota Hiace and the Toyota Hilux prices will not be affected.

UMW shares rose 30 sen to RM7.55 today. UMW’s 38% stake in Perodua will enable it to participate in the incentives for local car manufacturers. Lower Toyota car prices are also expected to boost sales for the non-national car market.

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Another amusing automobile-related ad. Toyota milks their reputation of reliability with this advertisement.

Pretty confident heheh. But yeah, it’s not to say that they haven’t earned the reputation. Check it out.

Video is after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Ever seen a broken down Toyota?

Since Toyota’s 8.7% stake purchase in Fuji Heavy Industries which makes Subaru cars, there has been on-going talks on the usage of Toyota’s hybrid engines in Subaru cars. But this proved to be difficult due to Subaru’s unique symmetrical all-wheel-drive drivetrain which could not be mounted to the engine easily.

The next best thing would be to develop a new hybrid engine for Subaru. Toyota and Fuji Heavy Industries have signed an agreement on Saturday to co-develop a petrol-electric hybrid system together for use on Subaru vehicles. More details on this alliance will be announced tonight at 10pm Malaysian time.

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