Toyota South Africa has dominated the 2012 Ipsos (formerly Synovate) Automotive Quality Awards, garnering seven gold segment awards and three gold brand awards. Toyota also has the honour of producing the best model scores across the segments. (Ipsos interviewed 22 000 new vehicle owners three months after ownership.
A globally recognised approach of calculating the score as Problems per 100 vehicles or PP100 was used – the vehicles with the lowest number of perceived faults rank the highest.)
The standout model ranges were the Yaris, Auris, Corolla and Hilux, all of which clinched top spots in a number of segments.
In the passenger vehicle section, the Yaris 1.0 placed first in the Entry segment. The Yaris also featured in the ultra-competitive Small Hatch segment – this time in 1.3-litre guise – where it tied for top spot with yet another Toyota model, the Auris.
Not to be outdone, the best-selling car of all time, the Corolla 1.3, scooped the Small Sedan award. Another sedan in the Toyota family that performed exceptionally well was the Lexus IS, which bagged second place in the Medium Sedan segment.
In the Top Sedan segment, the Corolla once again put in a fantastic showing: in 1.6 and 2.0 guise it added another gold award.
SUVs are now entrenched in South African automotive culture and here too, Toyota acquitted itself well with honours for the RAV4, Prado and Verso. For example in the Small Recreational Vehicle category, the RAV4 tied in third place. The Prado took home second place in the Large Recreational category, while in the Multi-purpose vehicle category, the Verso tied for third.
Toyota’s evergreen Hilux bakkie, the best-selling light commercial vehicle in the country, scooped both Double Cab segments in petrol and diesel form.
Toyota’s dominance was not limited to the vehicle segments, but also the brand category awards. Toyota’s Prospecton plant in Kwazulu-Natal was awarded the Best Local Plant Manufacturing (Passenger Vehicles). In addition, Toyota was deemed the Best Volume Passenger Car Brand Overall, an accolade it shared with Mazda. Finally, Toyota also took the award for Best One-Ton Double Cab Light Commercial Vehicle Brand Overall and Best Overall Light Commercial Vehicle Brand.
Kerry Roodt, General Manager of Marketing Communications for Toyota SA Motors, remarked that the Ipsos Awards are the latest in a long string of awards that Toyota has racked up in the past few months: “We were ranked the number one South African automotive company in The Sunday Times Top Brands Survey for 2012 as well as the world’s most valuable automotive brand in the recently published Best Global Brands 2012 by Interbrand. Then came the excellent showing in this year’s Kinsey Parts Review which saw Toyota outperform all other OEMs. This latest achievement is the proverbial cherry on top but it’s certainly not by accident that Toyota has got to this point. It’s testament to how the company has strategically been investing in all areas of business – from marketing and product development to parts and customer service.”
