Still no ESP for Corolla until facelift

Its latest SUV has arrived Down Under with electronic stability control but Toyota's top-selling passenger car is still more than 12 months away from being equipped with the same potentially life-saving technology. The subject of criticism since the car's launch earlier this year, the new 150 Series Corolla still does not offer VSC (Toyota's term for electronic stability control) at any trim level.

Indeed, Toyota Australia's senior executive director sales and marketing, David Buttner, reiterated at this week's Kluger launch (more here) Corolla will not get the safety upgrade until its first facelift -- now scheduled for late 2008.

"Stability control is an important safety technology," Buttner conceded, saying: "It's not a question of not wanting to offer VSC on Corolla -- it simply is not available to us until the update."

Toyota Oz's product planning chief Doug Soden elaborated: "VSC is available on the Auris [Corolla] in Europe but it's not just a case of taking the European hardware and calibration and applying it to the Australian model."

"There are many factors that come into it," Soden told the Carsales Network. "Even things like the way we engineer our roads has an effect."

According to Soden, Toyota's certification programs require Corolla to receive its own settings to suit Australia roads. He admitted other companies used overseas calibrations on their ESP systems here but stopped well short of saying such practices were dangerous.

Meantime, the carmaker will upgrade its safety offer on its locally produced Camry range from this month's production. Previously offered only on the top-of-the-range Grande model, all new Camrys produced after August 1 will feature VSC as standard equipment.

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