Australian automotive sales have started strongly in 2012 with a total of 76,783 sold. That’s an increase of 3199 sales compared to the same month last year. Sadly, we think, the growth is due in part to the seemingly insatiable appetite the Australian market has for SUVs. In this segment sales were up almost 30% [...]
Toyota confirmed overnight that it will be entering two TS030 Hyrbids into the 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship. One car, wearing the number 7, will be driven by Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazui Nakajima. The drivers for the second car will be announced shortly. Yoshiaki Kinoshita, team president, said: “The circumstances for the championship [...]
Chris Harris has just filed a review on the Toyota 86 over at PistonHeads. There was no promise of an extensive drive, just a thrash around the flat Jarama track in Spain. But the hype around the car meant a few laps was still worth the trip. Here’s a few snippets and we recommend you [...]
After last week’s brief twitter preview, Toyota Motorsport has officially revealed its new LMP1 racer, which is heading for Le Mans later this year. It’s called the Toyota TS030 Hybrid and it runs a conventional 3.4 litre V8 petrol engine. Final spec for the hybrid components will be finalised after more testing has taken place, [...]
With our Detroit Motor Show gallery we tried to bring you a bit closer to the action. Toyota has joined in by releasing a virtual booth of their stand. The video guide above shows you how it works and this link here takes you to the Toyota Global website where you can navigate your own [...]
While the world was discussing Peugeot’s sudden withdrawal from Le Mans racing, Scott Brownlee from Toyota PR cheekily revealed the first pics (above) of Toyota’s LMP1 Hybrid via twitter. “Sorry to see Peugeot pull out of Le Mans for 2012. Maybe the mere sight of our new car scared them,” he said. Last October Toyota [...]
We got wind of a racing Prius late last year and the Prius GT300 is now on display, in full racing livery, at the Tokyo Auto Salon. At this stage there’s no official text or detail from Toyota that we can see, but the large hybrid text on the side of the car indicates the [...]
We don’t usually spend too much time covering Toyotas here at AUSmotive. But while going through the pics for our Detroit Motor Show gallery we thought, credit where credit is due, this Toyota NS4 concept actually looks half decent. So we figured we’d take a proper look at the car, which Toyota says uses a [...]
Australia registered over one million new vehicle sales in 2011 the latest FCAI press release reveals. The final tally of 1,008,437 represents the fourth time the country has passed one million sales in a calendar year. Despite dropping more than 27,000 sales (-2.6%) on 2010 numbers, FCAI chief executive Ian Chalmers reminds us this is [...]
Hold on tight everyone Australia should crack 1,000,000 car sales in 2011 after VFACTS figures show 88,654 new vehicles were sold in November. That brings the year to date total to 925,978, which should allow the 1 million mark to be broken for only the fourth time in Australia’s history. “For the past four months [...]
A few days ago Subaru released a promo clip showing off their BRZ GT300. It will race in the highly competitive Japanese Super GT series. It would stand to reason, you would think, that Toyota would follow suit by producing an 86 GT300. Well, like us, you’d be wrong if you thought that. Here, then, [...]
The Toybaru project has been applauded for its back to basics approach. However, that won’t stop anyone applauding the suggestion from Chief engineer Tetsuo Tada that Toyota Racing Developments (TRD) is planning to give the 86 a boost by whacking on a supercharger to the 2.0 litre boxer engine. Rumours say power could be increased [...]
Like us you couldn’t make it to the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show either? Fear not as we’ve assembled a variety of images from the show featuring the usual suspects, such as the Toyota 86 and it’s close relative the Subaru BRZ. There’s also the weird and wonderful, too, in the form of the Daihatsu FC [...]
Ever since the Toyota 86 was released people have wanted to know what the 2.0 litre Toybaru boxer engine sounds like. Now, thanks to a couple of official ringtones from Toyota, we have an idea. Check out the samples below and if you want to download them yourself, head on over to the Toyota Global [...]
Now that the Toyota 86 (we’re supposed to say eight-six apparently) has been revealed fans of the car will be more desperate to know what it is like to drive. Thanks to an early review from the seat of a pre-production 86 by UK mag Autocar we can bring you this taster: “…the key facets [...]