Axed: Toyota Kills It's TRD Performance Division

[JoeT]

Toyota Dumps TRD

Toby Hagon & Richard Blackburn
19 December 2008
www.drive.com.au

It was designed to take on HSV and FPV, but before its second birthday Toyota's TRD brand has been killed off.

Toyota has ditched its Toyota Racing Development brand after just 16 months, blaming the current economic environment for the failure of the recently launched performance car outfit.

"With the realities of the financial crisis and the downturn in consumer confidence, companies worldwide have an overriding responsibility to do their utmost to conserve cash - and Toyota is doing just that," says Toyota Australia senior executive director Dave Buttner.

"The perspective has changed for business globally and those new rules require tough decisions for the greater good."

The TRD brand attracted just 888 customers in its short life; 537 were for the Aurion TRD sedan and 351 for the hotted-up HiLux utilities.


At the time of its launch, Toyota Australia said the performance car division was a world first and a possible global template for performance divisions of the company throughout the world.

But sales have been sluggish and the brand never really threatened the dominance of Holden Special Vehicles and to a lesser extent, Ford Performance Vehicles.

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TRD Gets The Axe

David Hassall
19 December 2008
www.goauto.com.au

Toyota Australia has axed its high-performance special vehicle division, Toyota Racing Developments.

Choosing to announce the decision on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, Toyota heralded the sudden closure as “an operational change”.

The TRD operation will cease from 31 March 2009 and Toyota says its 17 employees will be redeployed within the company.

TRD has been troubled from the outset, afflicted by development problems, delayed launches and an embarrassing engine failure that forced its first model, the supercharged V6 Aurion, off the market for a month.

Slow sales also forced Toyota to drop prices by as much as $5000 and to sell the vehicles through all its dealers rather than the original ‘elite’ group.

Toyota said in a statement that the TRD closure is the result of an on-going review that “has been amplified by the world economic downturn and the need to achieve significant operational efficiencies”.

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Toyota-Excitment: New Supercharged TRD Aurion Brings The Two Together (August 2007)
Review: TRD Hilux 4000SL vs HSV Maloo R8 - The Battle Of The Performance Sports Utes

[mgescuro]

TRD in Australia... or TRD globally???

I guess they can't build anything else but breadboxes...

[drew630]

I am guessing just Australia because TRD here is much older than just 16 months.

[slowinthefastlane]

It's a horrible acronym anyway. The headline "Toyota Dumps TRD" doesn't help matters.

[steinravnik]

Originally Posted by slowinthefastlane

It's a horrible acronym anyway. The headline "Toyota Dumps TRD" doesn't help matters.

[drew630]

^Hahahaha... nothing like a Toyota TuRD!!!

[BBDOS CV8]

TRD Oz. After promising everyone a 240Kw AWD missile to keep HSV and FPV honest they delivered a FWD 225Kw torque steerer which got pretty much panned for not even being as quick or capable as a standard Holden or Ford, let alone the HSV or FPV. Ride and steering of the car were highly questioned as to whether they were worthy of the 'special' tag.

The TuRD HiLux looked particularly bad value at roughly double the base car $$$ when it didn't add much refinement other than the blown engine. Neither of them were any real threat and no prospect of becoming one.

[FenwickHockey65]

Remember the A-BAT concept and it's TuRD variant, the Guano?

[FireFox89]

Well toyota's theory is that anything with a razor thin profit, gets the axe sooner before later. MR2/s, celica, supra getting the axe, killed the image that toyota was a "different" car company and promptly turned toyota's MO into seeing how many camrys or corollas they could turn out by the end of the month.

[FireFox89]

Originally Posted by slowinthefastlane

It's a horrible acronym anyway. The headline "Toyota Dumps TRD" doesn't help matters.

It could mean one thing in japan, but the term got lost in transition when brought to the us shores.

[Mr. Burns]

Originally Posted by slowinthefastlane

It's a horrible acronym anyway. The headline "Toyota Dumps TRD" doesn't help matters.

Everytime I see a TuRD variant I can't help but chuckle. Worst name for a performance division ever!

[PeterPuck]

I asked my father-in-law why his Tundra says that it's a "Turd".

He was actually quite offended.

Ha!!

[mbukukanyau]

Originally Posted by PeterPuck

I asked my father-in-law why his Tundra says that it's a "Turd".

He was actually quite offended.

Ha!!

Father in Law!!! bad move. But you were right.

[RB35SLT]

TRD = Failed

[jbernie]

Not really a shock, iirc about the only thing they really did was some rallying, FWD "performance" has none of the cache of HSV or FPV even if it is a Toyota.

No loss.