New 2024 Toyota Prado delayed until later next year

After 14 long years of service, the Toyota Prado is about to enter a new generation, but like a road-going tyre on a muddy bush track, the 250 Series’ mid-2024 showroom arrival appears to have slipped.

Speaking to carsales, Toyota Australia’s vice-president of sales and marketing, Sean Hanley, admitted that the new-generation 2024 Toyota Prado had moved from a mid-year arrival to “somewhere in that third quarter period, realistically”.

Given that thousands of Toyota customers have had their brand loyalty tested in recent years due to chronic new-vehicle delivery delays, the Japanese car-maker is grappling with how to ensure prospective Prado buyers – who are already lining up in large numbers – aren’t hit with extended wait times afflicting several other models such as the Kluger, LandCruiser and RAV4.

“I do know the new Prado is coming and I expect demand will be very strong,” said Hanley.

“It’s been seen, it has been displayed and it’s a great-looking vehicle. And you know Prado has a very strong following, so there’s been a lot of verbatim interest.”

The new Prado 250 Series design is a huge departure from the brand’s traditionally safe and conversative styling – and the blocky, Lego-like exterior appears to have found favour with customers.

Official orders haven’t opened yet, but carsales understands that Toyota dealerships are holding a significant number of cash deposits from buyers who don’t want to face stifling delays for the latest ‘Son of LandCruiser’.

However, Hanley insists we won’t see a repeat of the limited supply afflicting the LandCruiser 300 Series launch, which saw some buyers waiting years for their vehicle as others paid massive premiums to jump the queue.

A new approach is being trialled with the new 2024 Toyota Prado that aims to reduce the angst felt by many buyers while also placating Toyota dealers.

“We get finite [Prado] allocations to our dealers and they know that’s exactly what they’re getting. We’re trying to avoid an oversales situation, based on our supply planning,” said Hanley.

“So we will allocate slightly differently on this vehicle, where we say to our dealers: ‘This is what you’re getting for six months. This is what you’ll get in the second six months’, so that we have certainty of delivery date,” he said.

In the recent past, Toyota RAV4 customers faced delays of up to three years, but Hanley said it’s now down to 18 months.

“We’ve learned a lot of things in a post-COVID environment,” he said. “And one of those areas that we’ve looked at really carefully is how we actually allocate cars.

“We had a lot of legacy thinking and a lot of legacy systems, which worked and served us well for many years, by the way. But when we got into a tight supply situation we realised that things like customer prioritisation suddenly become deeply important.”

Several Toyota customers waiting for in-demand family SUVs like the Kluger have told carsales that dealers sometimes obfuscate, refuse to supply or simply don’t know when their vehicle will arrive.

It remains to be seen if Toyota will avoid costly delivery delays as Aussies are almost certain to embark on a Prado buying rampage, but Hanley said an online-style system where customers could order and track their vehicle directly would not be trialled.

“It’s not often we get asked the question about why don’t you just do customer orders – it’s because we have an obligation to our business partners as well,” he said, referring to its dealers.

“So it’s a fine balance between what we call ‘fair share’ allocation and customer prioritisation. And what we’ve learned post-COVID is that we have to ‘fair share’ but we have to give certainty of delivery to our dealers so that they can pass it on to their customers, so they know exactly how many they’re getting.

“And that’s what we’ll do with the new Prado, as a result of our learnings.”

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au