Aurion styling highlights buyer divide

Toyota's V6-engined family sedan, the Aurion, has taken a different design direction in its latest generation — causing some concern for the blokes tasked with selling it.
 
Where the previous generation Aurion was styled locally and looked sharper and sportier than the Camry on which it was based, the new model, released in April, is significantly more conservative in its design. That was the intention from the start, says Toyota Australia's Public Relations Manager, Mike Breen.

"The plan with Aurion was to move it more upmarket, into that luxury segment — to give it more of a Lexus feel," Mr Breen told motoring.com.au. "I guess as a result of that it's lost a little of its sporty flavour, from a styling point of view.

"[Toyota] obviously knew there was still a market for someone who wanted something a little sportier, so the Sportivo model remained. But they really wanted to move the car towards the luxury end of the market. When you do that... the styling becomes a little more conservative, but it seems to be working so far. They wanted to distance it a little more from Camry."

Dealers are rumoured to be concerned the new Aurion lacks the overall sporty presence of the previous car and the blame is being placed on foreign markets taking the 'prestige Camry' into a different market niche. Consumers in those markets reportedly eschew sporty trappings in favour of comfort and social aspirations. This, so the theory goes, leaves the Aussie Aurion without the same appeal as the old car. And a small market like Australia (around 10,000 Aurions sold here in a typical year) cannot exert much influence on the styling of a new model when much larger markets insist it look larger and more luxurious.

Yet the concerns of local sales staff may be misplaced anyway. VFACTS figures for last month reveal the Aurion sold 995 units in May, adding to the total of 2845 cars manufactured at Altona and sold domestically — Camry sales included. Bearing in mind also the cars that Toyota exports, that sales figure for the Aurion seems adequate, but can it be sustained?

"Those numbers are pretty honest numbers," replied Mr Breen, "there [are] no press cars or fleet demos in amongst those... a lot of them are privately bought, which is where we wanted to move the car to, so I think we can sustain those numbers. The sales guys are pretty confident we can."

And that seems to pinpoint a problem for the Aurion in the past; it was doing what was asked, injecting a touch of sporty spice in Toyota's medium/large car model ranges, but it was selling predominantly to fleets. By shifting the balance of the new car more in the direction of a traditional Cressida/Berlina/Fairmont-type demographic, Toyota could sell a larger percentage to private buyers — where the added profit is.

"That's why there was a big emphasis on trying to move both the Camry — but probably more so the Aurion — more towards the private buyer," says Mr Breen. "Obviously there's more money to be made from the private sector than fleet [or] government."

So it appears that sales of the Aurion are tracking according to plan.

But in Toyota's strategy to broaden the Aurion's global sales base (as well as local sales), the new model has lost that distinctly Australian element in its design. Apparently, says Mr Breen, Toyota Style Australia (TSA) was involved in the development of this new model but even the unique-to-Australia Aurion Sportivo was a project left largely to TMC [Toyota Motor Corporation, head office in Japan].

"[TSA] had input, but they weren't responsible for the styling of the Sportivo, so whilst they worked with TMC, TMC led the Sportivo program," he said.
 
It punctuates the development of the new Aurion with a question mark, given the first-generation model was styled entirely in Australia, by TSA, aiming to provide that sportier alternative to the Camry, with V6 power and looks to match.
 
Debatably, the Camry Hybrid is now the de facto hero model of Toyota's medium/large-car portfolio, sportier and delivering performance similar to the Aurion. Does that now make a third-generation Aurion for the Australian market largely redundant?

As some kind of success story for local design talent the previous Aurion is shaping up to be a hard act to follow.

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