The Toyota Lexcen - named after Ben Lexcen, who was responsible for the revolutionary winged keel that helped Australia II win the America's Cup yachting competition in 1983. thank you Graham!
You would think that the Lexcen would have lots of innovations - instead it was just a badge-engineered Holden Commodore.
Toyota were about as enthusiastic about this as they were earlier when compelled to fit the Holden Starfire engine into the Coronas sold in Australia. The Starfire was a cut-down (two-thirds) version of the old Holden straight-six and it didn’t improve the Corona. The badge-engineering produced other strange things, notably a Holden version of the Corolla and the Nissan “Ute” which was a re-named Falcon utility. All these things happened because of local content rules or the government’s “car plan” designed to rationalize manufacturing at a time when tariff protection was being reduced. The problem was eventually solved when the manufacturers gave up and ceased local production.
The government brought in incentives for the car manufacturers in Australia to rebadge vehicles to another brand. Amongst others we had a Nissan Patrol/Ford Maverick, Ford Ute/Nissan, 3 toyotas & a Nissan sold as Holdens, it was just weird and led to the complete demise of the Australian Car Manufacturing industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_car_plan
Toyota were about as enthusiastic about this as they were earlier when compelled to fit the Holden Starfire engine into the Coronas sold in Australia. The Starfire was a cut-down (two-thirds) version of the old Holden straight-six and it didn’t improve the Corona. The badge-engineering produced other strange things, notably a Holden version of the Corolla and the Nissan “Ute” which was a re-named Falcon utility. All these things happened because of local content rules or the government’s “car plan” designed to rationalize manufacturing at a time when tariff protection was being reduced. The problem was eventually solved when the manufacturers gave up and ceased local production.
ReplyDeleteThe government brought in incentives for the car manufacturers in Australia to rebadge vehicles to another brand. Amongst others we had a Nissan Patrol/Ford Maverick, Ford Ute/Nissan, 3 toyotas & a Nissan sold as Holdens, it was just weird and led to the complete demise of the Australian Car Manufacturing industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_car_plan
ReplyDelete