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By
EWAN KENNEDY
23 April 2007
Toyota is hitting new heights by the day in the Australian
new car market, but is anxious for sales to go even higher by attacking
the high-performance car market.
Using the TRD (Toyota Racing Developments) nameplate, which is
well known to driving enthusiasts worldwide, but still relatively
unknown in Australia, at least amongst the everyday motorist,
Toyota has big plans for its Aurion.
The aim is to add a supercharger to the top of the 3.5-litre V6
engine. Details aren't being revealed at this stage, but TRD's
engineers are being relative modest about their aims, at this
stage talking about a power output of 235 kW. Only 35 kW up on the
standard engine, or 31 kW on that engine running on premium
unleaded petrol.
Nothing special in the performance department on the face of
it. But expect there to be a strong emphasis on torque at all
revs. Additionally, a supercharger running a relatively low boost
should result in an engine with excellent throttle response.
A sporting styling package will obviously be very much part of
the TRD Aurion equation. Some concepts, which may be reasonably
close to reality, have recently been shown publicly at the
Melbourne Motor Show. And the enthusiasts seem keen on what they
have seen, though remain sceptical of the words ‘Toyota’ and
‘sports’ being used in the same sentence.
Rather than fighting what's likely to be a losing battle for
the hearts of the traditional buyers of V8 Holden and Falcon
models from HSV and FPV, Toyota says it’s going after the
high-performance European models.
This leaves it in a slightly odd marketing position. The
supercharged Aurion is likely to sell in the $50,000 to $70,000
bracket, which would make it tens of thousands of dollars cheaper
than vehicles of similar size from Audi, BMW and Mercedes.
So TRD will have a go at the more affordable European marques
such as Alfa, Renault and Volkswagen, with their GTA, RenaultSport
and R series models respectively. The trouble from TRD's point of
view is that these are all smaller cars than the family-sized
Aurion.
The Mazda and Subaru and possibly Mitsubishi hotshots – MPS,
Spec and Evo – should also be taken into consideration.
It will be very interesting to see what the might of the Toyota
Australia marketing machine can achieve in this new field when the
quick Aurion is launched later this year.
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Marque Publishing Company
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