Toyota

Take a drive down any road in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne and you are sure to come across a Toyota. Around town, the Starlet and Corolla make a confident companion for those needing the services of an economical and reliable runabout. Families will appreciate the Corona and Camry models and the no-fuss day in-day out practicality and reliability they provide. Head out of town and you may come across a happy Toyota owner enjoying the speedy surefootedness of the Celica and Supra models that will reliably get you where you need to go at pace. And in the outback where the dust and the flies love to get up your nose, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next vehicle rolling by might be the rugged Toyota Hilux or, Australia’s favourite, the 4X4 king of the outback – Landcruiser.

Yep, reliability and capability are what you need out beyond the black stump, and that’s why Aussies have voted with their wallets and made Toyota the best selling car marque. You have no doubt been a Smart cookie and picked up the catch phrase that has been used four times to rightly help describe a Toyota. I’ll give you a hint; it starts with the letter r. Toyota’s success has been built around sensible, conservative engineering which has given generations of drivers the cheap and reliable transport that no other manufacturer has matched.

In the beginning, Toyota was not a car maker. In 1926 Toyota was Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd who made good quality looms for weaving. In 1937, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd began producing cars that wove magic from a purpose-built factory in Koromo, Japan. And at this time, a numerologist gave Toyoda the advice that they should change their name to Toyota to improve the luck of the company, which has remained with us to this day.

Kiichiro Toyoda was a man who admired Henry Ford’s production methods and he, like other Japanese car manufacturers, copied the process and did it better. The war halted Toyota’s progress, and even after the war, it was restricted to mostly making trucks. However, Toyota launched its first small car (SA Model) in 1947. In 1957, the Toyopet offshoot of Toyota made a significant new vehicle. This was called the Crown, a pleasantly styled four door sedan.

Toyota did not buy any overseas technology, and instead they undertook a vigorous research and development programme for themselves. This gave them a very strong position to design and build their own reliable cars that were cheap and economical. Perhaps this is why Toyota is the most successful motor company in the world – they have done things right more often than other car companies. Currently, Toyota is the world's third largest manufacturer of automobiles in unit sales and in net sales. It is by far the biggest Japanese automotive manufacturer, producing more than 5.5 million vehicles per year. This is equivalent to one vehicle produced every six seconds.

In the 1990s, Toyota worked hard at producing a wide variety of vehicles. Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars and started to add many larger and more luxurious vehicles to their lineup. Toyota also began production of the world's best selling hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, in 1997.

Toyota has also recently designed and built a four-speed electronically controlled automatic with buttons for power and economy shifting, and an eight-speed automatic transmission. Toyota, and Toyota-produced Lexus and Daihatsu cars, consistently rank extremely high in terms of overall quality and reliability. Consumer surveys back this up.

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