Monday, December 05, 2011
By Pranjal Gera
Toyota to set-up performance tuning shops – Toyota Racing Development – in India
The Japanese auto giant Toyota is gearing to set-up TRD (Toyota Racing Development) shops in the Indian market by the first quarter of next calendar year. These shops will be basically in-house performance tuning shops for Toyota portfolio models in the country. The company will display a range of its performance tuned cars at the forthcoming Delhi International Auto Expo in the month of January 2012.
According to company the TDR will either be launched at the auto expo or after 2-3 months of this event, as a final decision in this regard is yet to be taken by the company. As per Mr. Sandeep Singh, Deputy Managing Director of Toyota Kirloskar Motors, they have received the approval from their Japanese head-office for setting-up this new venture.
Besides being involved in the racing tournaments, TDR offers a range of performance enhancing parts and additional accessories that comprises of superchargers, brake pads, suspension kits, sport exhausts etc. These accessories will be sold for most of the Toyota Cars in India including premium sedan Corolla Altis, luxury sedan Camry, and sports utility vehicles like Land Cruiser and Fortuner.
With setting-up TDR in India, Toyota will become the first mass segment car maker to have performance tuned cars in the country. So far, only luxury segment car makers were offering such in-house performance tuned version s of their cars in India including ‘M’ series of models from BMW, ‘AMG’ range of models from Mercedes Benz, and ‘RS’ badge models of Audi.
