Toyota is enlisting Britney Spears and offering aggressive financing to promote its new Soluna Vios "global subcompact" and knock over the Honda City. Not only does Toyota intend to end the Honda City's six-year reign as champion in the entry-level market, but it wants to replace its own Corolla Altis as the best-selling sedan in Thailand.

Toyota yesterday also unveiled its "Buy Now Pay Later" campaign for the Vios, allowing customers to take delivery but pay the deposit three months later. Introductory prices for the Vios are competitive with the City, from Bt499,000 to Bt659,000. All versions come with a 109-horsepower, 1.5-litre engine. Following the successful launch of its Corolla Altis sedan, which used Brad Pitt as the presenter, Toyota has chosen pop singer Britney Spears to promote the Vios.

"Our initial focus will be the 'young market' but the product and the name will capture the interest of a broad age range," said Toyota Motor Thailand's president Ryoichi Sasaki.

Toyota's executive vice-president Paiboon Waiquamdee said he was fully confident that the Vios would become the country's best-selling car because of three elements: good product, marketing strategy, and Toyota's strong distribution network. Toyota has targeted sales of 30,000 for the Soluna Vios next year, more than double the sales of its old Soluna.

The figure is ambitious given that total sales in the passenger-car market were 101,839 units for the first 10 months of this year. Although Toyota has dubbed the Vios "the global sedan", so far it is only on sale in China and Thailand.
Sasaki said yesterday that Toyota was still studying the export plan for the Thai-produced Vios. Nonetheless, he said Toyota Thailand would export some "necessary parts" for the Vios to China and would at least export the car to neighbouring countries such as Brunei and Indonesia, as it did with the previous model. Vios is derived from a Latin word meaning "to move forward", according to Toyota.

Despite Toyota's aggressive Buy Now Pay Later campaign, Pongsak Wattanavong, marketing manager of Honda Automobile (Thailand), said Honda had no similar promotion planned for its new City. "When you have to use a campaign like this, it suggests that your product might not be good enough," he said yesterday. Pongsak said that Honda had set its prices to reflect the real value of its cars, and estimated that Toyota's three-month pay-later campaign would save Bt15,000 to Bt20,000 on the cost of the car for buyers.

He added that although the new City had not been unveiled, Honda had already received 3,000 orders since its media launch on October 12. The Honda City and the Toyota Vios will make their public debuts at the Thailand International Motor Expo 2002, which will be held at the Impact Exhibition Centre, Muang Thong Thani, from tomorrow to December 10. Toyota said it could deliver the new Vios to consumers as soon as it hit the showrooms on December 7.

 

Reported by Dana Bennett - WoB North American News Correspondent
Posted by Ruben

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