Axe set to come down on Toyota Etios

UPDATE: Toyota South Africa has confirmed that the Etios will continue to be offered on local shores past April with an announcement about a new model set for later this year.

The importer for Toyota in India, Kirloskar Motor, has officially confirmed that sales of the Etios will come to an end on 1 April.

An unexpected announcement made last month, carandbike.com reports that the Etios, along with the previous generation Corolla sedan known as the Altis, will  not be adapted to meet the more stringent Bharat Stage (BS) VI emission regulations set to come into effect on said date, as enough units have been made to satisfy demand.

According to the publication, production at the Bidadi Plant outside Bangalore had already ended in January with not only the BS6 requirements, but also popularity of SUVs and MPV being attributed to the Etios’ sales slow-down.

“Since Jan 27th 2020 all our sales from the factory to our dealers has been BS6 cars only. We would continue to sell the most advanced and sustainable technologies to the Indian customers. This also applies to cases when we have to discontinue an existing model to vacate plant capacity for advanced and better technologies to come in,” Toyota Kirloskar Motor said in statement to the publication.

The Japanese marque’s discontinuing of the Etios is likely to have an effect on South Africa as the only other manufacturing facility, the Sorocaba Plant near Sao Paulo in Brazil, produces models for South America in left-hand-drive only. A third factory, the Karawang Plant on Indonesia, had already stopped production in 2017 to focus on the smaller Agya based on the Daihatsu Ayla.

In India, the Etios’ place will be filled by the Yaris and Suzuki Baleno-rebadged Glanza, with no mentioning of a replacement for it in South Africa having been made.

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