Toyota’s Global Sedan for this Decade
Recognising that the China market is going to be a very important and lucrative one for automakers in coming years, Toyota is giving increasing attention to that single market which has a quarter of all living persons on the planet. The population is fast moving ahead economically and with China now a member of WTO, trade barriers will come down and allow foreign companies to do more business there.
So it’s not surprising that Japan’s No.1 automaker recently unveiled the Toyota T-1 at the Auto China 2002 event in Beijing. This is a brand new concept model which suggests how Toyota’s next generation of global sedans will look like. The presence of the concept model served to underline the company’s exhibition theme of “Challenge for New Technology and Driving Pleasure.”
The styling is still fairly straightforward – but with a Cd of 0.29 – with a 4-door configuration. Shorter than a Corolla Altis, it could well be the basis for the next generation of the Soluna, a model which Toyota specially developed for the developing countries of Asia in the mid-1990s.
Power comes from a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder DOHC EFI engine, possibly from the same family as that found in the Yaris, which won an award earlier in the year.
The chassis appears to be fairly common in layout, with MacPherson struts in front and a torsion beam rear axle. This arrangement looks to be Toyota’s basic platform for this decade, replacing the dual link approach in the 1980s and 1990s.
As with all Toyotas developed today, the bodyshell has to pass GOA – which stands for Global Outstanding Assessment, an in-house safety standard which is very tought – and the main feature is the effective dissipation of collision forces during an accident.
Not much is revealed of the T-1 but going by past practice, a concept car that looks like its’ ‘ready for the showroom’ is likely to make an appearance within a year. This was apparent in the recent launches of the Toyota ist and Voltz, both of which were presented as ‘concept cars’ at the Tokyo Motorshow last year.
T-1 DIMENSIONS
(Latest Corolla in brackets)
Length: 4285 mm (4530)
Width: 1690 mm (1705)
Height: 1440 mm (1480)
Wheelbase: 2500 mm (2600)
