Mystery Toyota model being developed by Australia for Thailand and Malaysia. Sub-Vios compact?

In these current time and age, there is no such thing as a made in x country car. Globalization does not only mean that today's cars are built with components sourced from all over the world, but also means that product development is now spread across to different teams in different countries to leverage on each of their own comparative advantage. At the recent Sydney Motor Show, the manager of Toyota Style Australia, Paul Beranger, reportedly revealed to the Australian press that TSA is currently working a regional product that will not be sold in Australia, but in other regional Asia Pacific markets, including Thailand and Malaysia. He further added that “We have some people coming down from Malaysia and Thailand soon to discuss a project for them.”

Melbourne based Toyota Style Australia is one of the 4 global design centers maintained by Toyota, the others are in California, USA (Calty Design Research Inc), ED2 (Toyota Europe Design and Development) in Nice, France, and of course its Tokyo Design Center in Japan. Previous work by TSA included the development for the Aurion (Asian market Camry), and two short-lived Australian market only TRD Hilux and TRD Aurion, and the Sportivo Coupe Concept Car in 2004. Surprising eh? That our Camry is partially developed by the Aussies.

Paul Beranger and his team at Toyota Style Australia. In background are the now discontinued, Australian market only TRD Hilux and TRD Aurion.

Back to the "regional product" by TSA. Not much detail is known other than the major markets in focus are Malaysia and Thailand, and that is a low cost car. Some are speculating that this could be a sub-Vios model, a variation based on Indian market Etios compact car, previously reported by the Japanese press as the EFC or Emerging Market Family Car.

Although lacking in having a strong domestic car manufacturing base (Toyota is the only major foreign OEM that builds cars in Australia), Australia boasts of an excellent education system that supplies to a wide talent pool, allowing the country to quickly adapt itself from being a regional manufacturing base (having lost much of its cost competitiveness to Thailand, which is supplying more and more cars to Australia) into a regional design hub. Australia not only does design work for Toyota, but also for Ford and General Motors.

The recently unveiled T6 Ford Ranger and its upcoming SUV sister car the next generation Ford Everest, the Indian market Ford Figo were all developed by Ford's Asia-Pacific and Africa Product Planning team and engineers at Ford Broadmeadows in Campbellfield. At General Motors, GM's Australian operations arm Holden, was tasked to develop the Zeta platform, which now underpins the Chevrolet Camaro.

The B0 segment is currently heating up with a lot of new entries coming to the market, headed by the highly acclaimed Hyundai i10 (the 1.25-litre version is this author's favourite in the segment), Suzuki Alto, Nissan March and the rumored March sedan.