It is a known fact that the world’s auto leader, Toyota Motor has partnered with the luxury car major BMW in order to churn out a snazzy and powerful sports car to charm the global audience. Well the association of the two global auto behemoths seems to be very successful already as Toyota is using a sourced engine from the house of BMW for the 2014 Toyota Verso. The car majors are busy working on the much anticipated sports car platform that should one of a kind.
The sourcing of the BMW engine by the Japanese auto leader is however not a singular instance of borrowing engines, as Toyota Motor has contemplations to use some BMW diesel engines for a range of its car models. As for the new 2014 Toyota Verso, it is powered by a BMW 1.6 liter diesel engine that has the capability to produce a max power output of 110 bhp and a peak torque of 270 Nm. Toyota has plans to source another bigger diesel engine of the capacity 2.0 liter from BMW.
An auto journal has recently revealed that Toyota Motor will receive a whole range of transverse diesel motors from the house of BMW as the benefit of the agreement between the auto giants. The European Projects Director at the Toyota Research & Development Centre in Belgium, Gerald Killmann said that the company has thought well on the fact that the diesel passenger car sales are primarily concentrated in the car market of Europe, and producing an entirely new diesel engine will require a lot of development work as well as time. Thus, Toyota came to the decision that in such a situation the best thing would be to co-operate with a prominent manufacturer rather than developing a diesel mill itself.
Killmann further revealed the important news that as the sales of the Toyota GT 86 sports car have been lower than expected by the company in all the major car markets, a high performance model variant is very much required. He went on to explain that a faster version of the GT 86 will be really desirable by the car consumers and will surely be awaited. However, given the current low sales of the GT 86, the company cannot justify to put another faster sports car variant on production.
The Indian car market is also very inclined on diesel models. Toyota offers the 1.4 liter D-4D diesel engine option in its Etios, Liva and the Corolla Altis, while the Camry is sold in only petrol option. It remains to be seen whether or not Toyota uses the BMW 1.6 liter and the 2.0 liter diesel engines for Corolla and the Camry in India.
Now, this news gives rise to a lot questions regarding the possibility of Toyota and BMW’s joint plan of producing a sports car to be shelved and the joint venture to turn into technology and components partnership. Moreover, is the Toyota FT-1 really coming?
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I am into the auto blogs field for quite a long time. Living my passion of reviewing cars.
Tagged: Toyota FT-1 Concept
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