Toyota Astra to start producing mass-market sedan

By Russell Williamson

By mid-1998, Toyota Astra Motors is expected to begin building a new small sedan to meet the transport needs of the mass-vehicle market.

The car is being developed by Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan under the Affordable Family Car (AFC) project but will be built exclusively outside of Japan.

The car is being designed as a sedan alternative to volume- selling commercial-derived vehicles such as Toyota's Kijang.

It will compete with the whole range of new small sedans, including PT Timor Putra Nasional's Timor car and Daewoo's Nexia, which are expected to make their way onto the Indonesian market over the next year.

Toyota Astra Motors' head of public affairs, George E. Pattian, said the vehicle will be built at a new factory just outside Jakarta.

"The construction of the factory will start sometime next year and we expect it to run in full operation in 1998," George said.

However, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan said that at the moment there were only plans to produce the car in Thailand.

He said any plans for the car's production in Indonesia had been put on hold until issues surrounding the national car, called Timor, were evaluated.

"We have the space to build a plant but we are holding off with plans to see what happens with the new national car policy," the spokesman said.

He said the new car would go into production in Thailand at about the end of this year, to go on sale there at the beginning of 1997.

According to Toyota, the vehicle is "an ideal sedan for one- car families, offering a balance of style, practicality, pleasure, safety and reliability, all packaged together at an affordable price".

Although details of the car's exact specifications are yet to be determined, it will be a four door sedan capable of seating five people.

It will be based on the Toyota Tercel platform, a small sedan sold in Japan which sits in size between the Starlet and Corolla, and will be powered by a 1.5-liter engine.

Despite being based on the Tercel platform, the engine drivetrain and transmission components are all being developed specifically for the new car, to meets the requirements of the developing sedan market in Southeast Asia and maximize local content.

Toyota Motor Thailand is investing Rp 42 billion in expanding both its car assembly and engine manufacture plants to build the new car.

Initially, it is expected to build up to 40,000 of the cars per year for Thailand's domestic market and possibly for export within the region.

"Based on the results in the Thai market we will decide whether we will export it to other Southeast Asian countries," the spokesman said.

Although the Toyota Motor Corporation spokesman said the car would only be built in Thailand, he said Toyota Motor Thailand would be procuring components from a number of other ASEAN nations, including Indonesia, under the Brand to Brand Complementation program.

This program allows the export and import of components within ASEAN countries without duties, to improve the economies of scale of manufacturing.

"The difficulty of manufacturing in Southeast Asia is that not one market is large enough yet to support having individual separate suppliers in each country.

"We can locate a component manufacturer in the Philippines and it can supply all of our assembly operations and all of our vehicle manufacturers in the different ASEAN countries," he said.

He said that initially, Toyota Motor Thailand would be sourcing seat frames for the project from Indonesia.