Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT) is understood to be planning the launch of a turbocharged version of its Soluna Vios compact this year to give the line a sporty option.

A turbo could boost the power of the standard 1.5-litre four-cylinder Vios engine from 110ps to around 150ps, and a stronger suspension would be fitted to cope with the additional output.
The turbo launch may well tie in with the launch of a Vios one-make race series, with two classes of car competing over five legs. Sources in Thailand say the racers will compete for cash prized of 1.6 million baht (USD). TMT says its marketing effort this year will endeavour to be more interactive, allowing for more customer participation and product testing. TMT has powered ahead in the first quarter of 2003, selling 40,906 vehicles for an overall market share of 34.4 percent. In the passenger car sector, it sold 20,925 units to lead second-placed Honda by a wide margin


from thai yahoo group conversation....

I have to hand it to Toyota: they are masters of marketing (eventhough they cheat often) and they certainly have the right people running the marketing department.

Despite what we say about the technology being state of the art in the City's 88ps iDSI engine, the fact remains that many enthusiasts still yearns for more power. Indeed in recent months, the Vios has begun to exploit its advantage of having a more powerful engine with the last figures indicating that it has finally overtaken the City in terms of sales - outselling the City by 2 : 1 !!!

To handle this, Honda Asia introduced the new 110ps VTEC City in Thailand just a few days ago, and should be filtering it down to ASEAN over the next few months.

And Toyota, to counter this, actually introduced the limited edition, TRD Vios TURBO just ONE DAY after the VTEC City's launch in Bangkok ! The killer is while Honda is conservative and unadventurous, introducing the VTEC City only after it's ready for sale, Toyota unashamefully introduced the VIOS TURBO and then tell people 'sorry car not available yet, have to wait a few months'. In fact, even the price is not available yet. Guess I now know where our local Proton guys learnt their trick ! (the Gen2 is not available for delivery yet) !!

The Vios turbo is a limited edition run of only 600 units. It's fitted with a TRD turbo-intercooler unit that costs over 100k Thai Baht (or around RM10k) and boosts the Vios' power output to 140+ps. Wah, even I have to salute the Toyota Thai's marketing people's resourcefullness !!

It's shocking but I guess we need this kind of thing in order to shock Honda into becoming more aggressive. I know the Honda Malaysia guys are already talking about this. I hope this makes them more aggressive for this year, especially with their target of fighting with Toyota for the No-1 non national car position for this year 2004