Toyota news

Photos: EMP

08th April 2008

If you fancy a shopping spree at this new mall, don’t expect to fit all your items in your basket! The shelves aren’t only stacked with the usual mix of food, clothes and gadgets – brand new cars are on offer, too.

It’s a novel idea from Japanese marque Toyota, which is using the indoor shopping centre to showcase its latest models. Instead of hiding them in dealers, it’s dotting them around the mall’s walkways.

Visitors to the sprawling site, in Yokohama, Japan, will have to pass the vehicles to access the 220 shops, array of restaurants and the gymnasium that the mall also houses.

Other features will include shopping trolleys shaped like cars, and a model store boasting a range of the brand’s vehicles. Toyota’s humanoid robot technology will be displayed, too. But top brass aren’t borrowing space from the site’s owners. Instead, the mall – open this week – was developed and built by the firm as part of a new sales strategy to drum up fresh interest in cars among new motorists. Toyota is keen to find novel ways of targeting youngsters who spend plenty of time shopping for items such as mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets.

Vehicle sales in Japan are forecast to drop to a 27-year low of 5.3 million for the 2007-08 financial year when they’re announced later this month – down six per cent on 2006-07.

Toyota’s sales chief Yoichiro Ichimaru said the firm couldn’t afford to sit back and wait for business to come to it. “We need to provide greater opportunities for people to see our cars,” he explained.

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