Toyota Corolla Altis In Detail

Toyota Corolla Altis In Detail

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The Toyota Corolla has been around since 1966 and many of you will probably recall it from the days you were kids. As the most popular Toyota model – 28 million were sold worldwide since the first generation – which has also been the bestseller in Japan for over three decades, the development of each new generation has been a tremendous challenge on the chief engineers given the responsibility.

And so it was with Takeshi Yoshida, who was the chief engineer for this new generation, the first new Corolla of the 21st century. Yoshida faced many new challenges because of the changed demands of customers. It was clear that the ‘traditional’ Corolla concept that had worked well for four decades was not necessarily going to work any longer. Higher quality and more features were demanded, along with new approaches to styling. This led Yoshida to formulate a concept for his new Corolla which he called ‘New Century Value’ (NCV).

Top management also presented additional challenges by demanding that production costs be reduced so that the competitive edge could be gained. On the one hand, it was accepted that customers were more demanding and more was expected but the company wanted to give more while spending less to make the cars!

The approach that Yoshida took was, in his own words, ‘to reduce waste’. There were many ways to reduce waste but it took a lot of effort and time, which was also less than before because Toyota was aiming to shorten model cycle times, again to beat competitors. His stint with the team that developed the first Lexus body helped because the Chief Engineer of that team had been very strict about waste and weight.

The designers in Japan and Europe (Toyota’s European design centre was substantially involved in the styling of this generation) were also ‘ordered’ to think ‘out of the box’, to approach styling from entirely new directions. Few elements from the past generation could be used and as Yoshida put it, “the only thing we did not touch was the Toyota emblem on the grille”. Even the door handle design was totally changed to the grip-type that is more typical in larger European sedans.

The result: an entirely new Corolla which makes as big a leap in all aspects as the seventh generation of 1991 (the one which many regarded as the ‘mini-Lexus’).

VARIANT FOR ASIA
But impressive as it is, the new ninth generation’s design was not necessarily suited for all 150 markets that the Corolla sells in. Yoshida realised this and had formed a ‘regional chief engineer system’ so that more focus could be given to four major markets – North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

Following the positive response to the Corolla variant that was specially styled for Europe (in the previous generation), Toyota continued to tailor the model for specific markets. Where in past years, the ‘tailoring’ usually encompassed engine and chassis tuning, this now extended to styling as well. It meant extra work but was necessary because European tastes are different from American tastes which are also different from Asian tastes… and Japanese tastes.

This is why a second variant known as the Corolla Altis was created, primarily for the Asian market (but may well be accepted by the other regions). It differs from the one sold in Japan and Singapore in exterior styling and size and is not even made in Japan. At this time, it is only assembled in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

To digress a bit, we’ve decided to use just Altis instead of Corolla Altis to save typing – leaving out Corolla would save about 400 characters if we mentioned the model’s name 50 times! And we think that in time too, people will refer to the model as ‘Altis’…

continued on page 2…

The Japanese version
History of the Toyota Corolla


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