Top Brand: Toyota
Thursday, 3 December 2020
What’s this? Toyota scooping up the Top Car and Top Brand gong two years in a row? What mad mirror universe type stuff is this?
The truth of the matter is simple: Toyota is on a massive roll, pumping out excellent car after excellent car following years of lying back and letting its reputation do all the heavy lifting.
Take last year for example: 2019 saw Toyota launch our Top Car pick, the RAV 4 off the back of the all-new and very impressive Corolla. Arguably the secret to a large part of the impressiveness of both vehicles was Toyota’s TNGA (Toyota Next Generation Architecture) platform that underpinned both and had quietly debuted under the Prius earlier.
It was also the next generation of hybrid tech that appeared in that Prius that went along way to making those new models shine as it spread through their ranks as well.
**READ MORE:
* The little big winner: the Stuff Top Car for 2020 is the Toyota Yaris
* Toyota is back and it's a wonderful thing
**
But it wasn’t just the RAV4 last year, it was also an excellent new Hiace van that saw the biggest change in the model's history, moving to a semi-bonnet design that brings the Kiwi favourite up to speed with European models on passive safety.
But the thing that really impressed us about Toyota last year was the fact that it leapt from 'worthy but dull' to be actually interesting and innovative in a remarkably short time.
Sure, the massive multi-generational jumps in RAV4 and Hiace were impressive enough, but the addition of the GR Supra was a real king hit, even if Toyota's collaboration with BMW on the car (and its own Z4) was a contentious point. It’s still a fantastic car.
But what about 2020? Well, Toyota has carried on that momentum, building on it by releasing even more impressive and polished vehicles, like the Top Car-dominating Yaris.
Long-derided as an afterthought in the Toyota range the last Yaris was well over a decade old behind its increasingly chromed-up nose and, quite frankly, felt it.
But, as you may have guessed from the number of categories it nabbed this year, the new one is anything but an afterthought – also sharing a derivative of the TNGA platform, the Yaris is packed with tech right across its range and, yes, is actually a good thing to drive. Oh, and it’s ridiculously frugal, even in straight petrol form.
But it goes even deeper than that with the introduction of an SUV version of the Yaris (yes, really) and the utterly mad GR Yaris rally-derived hot hatch. Both of these arrived too late for consideration in this year’s Top Cars competition, but we have driven both since and can happily report they only bolster the Yaris’ case for winning.
And, indeed, for Toyota to deserve scoring the Top Brand category once again.
The GR Yaris further builds on Toyota’s Gazoo Racing brand that it launched locally with the GR Supra last year and Toyota's motorsport division continues cooking up all kinds of things for road car customers. The GR Yaris is sensational proof of that, but we will also soon see top GR Masters of the Nurburgring (GRMN) models and also a lighter touch with the GR Sport brand, such as the lightly-tweaked C-HR GR Sport that we will see here early next year.
But it wasn’t just the sporty stuff that impressed us this year, like last year’s all-new Hiace, this year’s comprehensively refreshed Hilux impressed us enough to steal the ute gong from under the nose of the all-new Isuzu D-Max.
With the Hilux it was like Toyota took a Ford Ranger, pulled it to bits and highlighted where it was good and said “do that a bit better”. And it worked.
In a year that Covid-19 decimated car sales Toyota is still a dominant presence in the sales charts, despite a few unexpected wobbles bought about by the severe disruptions.
In fact, criticism that Toyota only dominates the sales charts because of its sales to rental fleets fell as flat as those fleet sales this year – with rental business down by a staggering (but unsurprising) 83 per cent this year, Toyota maintains its lead of the (admittedly diminished) overall market with a 17 per cent share.
But just having the most sales alone isn’t good enough to make Toyota our Top Brand (it does help though, because people clearly like their cars), it is also the company’s willingness to transform itself from the absolute epitome of a traditional car company to something innovative and, yes, interesting.
Toyota NZ’s Drive Happy programme that ditched dealerships, moved to an agency 'store' model and put more of a focus on private customers was a bold move that has paid off, both for the company and its customer, while the constant stream of excellent new models that not only serve the traditional Toyota ideals of “practical and reliable” also now include an additional dose of “engaging and interesting” and, yes, even fun.
And while all the technology and business innovation is a convincing argument for Top Brand status, it really is the re-introduction of that “fun” aspect that nails it for us.