The new Corolla made its debut in the domestic market in August 2000 but made its UK arrival in early 2002. He therefore didn’t want to betray that reputation. In the back of Yoshida’s mind, however, was the fact that Corolla had always been a product that tapped into the needs of the era and provided a high degree of customer satisfaction. ![]() And finally, that its safety and environmental performance should exceed current standards and meet future criteria. Secondly, that its ride and handling should be enjoyable for all. First, that the new car’s packaging, style and quality should not be confined to class conventions. ![]() Three major targets were identified in these meetings. Cooperation was actively encouraged, a technique that allowed the intentions and progress of each team to be communicated in regular open-room meetings. In addition, rather than allowing each development and production department to work in isolation, Yoshida instigated the idea of a common goal. This included the exterior design, which, for the first time in the car’s history, was penned in Europe. Working from an all-new platform, every area of the ninth-generation Corolla was developed afresh from a different perspective. So instead of developing the car to meet the needs of high-volume markets such as the United States, it was primarily designed to appeal to the most demanding world market – Europe. They had to break away from class concepts and target high standards in design, performance and quality. Yoshida pondered for a long time about how to change this mind set, coming to the conclusion that the development team needed to start again from scratch. However, I believed that if a manufacturer is overly concerned about failure and ultimately places priority on cost and ease of production, it will end up making a product that is convenient for themselves.” Yoshida shed light on the feeling of the time when he commented: “I constantly heard about how the Corolla was a can’t fail vehicle for Toyota. In order to achieve this, Toyota realised that the new car shouldn’t simply rework long-standing designs and values it needed to proactively protect the respected Corolla brand by introducing new, thoroughly modern priorities that harmonised with the moved goalposts of the New Millennium. In the face of this changing financial marketplace, it was vital that Corolla continued the success of its predecessors yet evolved to appeal once again to a broad range of car-buyers. What’s more, the consumers that actually were in a position to buy a new car were getting older. The economy was sluggish, and families were beginning to prefer compact multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) over traditional body styles. Work began on the next-generation Corolla in the late Nineties – a difficult period for the Japanese car industry. Despite the fact that Corolla production had recently exceeded 28 million units and that it accounted for 20% of Toyota’s entire annual sales worldwide, he wanted to put together a car that broke the link with Corolla models of the past and constructed a new global standard for the 21st Century. In developing the ninth-generation Toyota Corolla, chief engineer Takeshi Yoshida gave himself a risky and unenviable task.
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