Toyota 5 Continent Drive: A Quest to Discover Real India

A Quest to Discover Real India

Road tripping on the grandest scale possible

Every stellar story that exists today contains a great journey. Not just a philosophical one, but an actual physical journey where the protagonists travel significant distances in a bid to complete their quest and change their view on life. Well, that’s pretty much an easy way to define Toyota’s 5 Continent drive. Nothing short of an epic journey, it saw multiple teams from Toyota drive different vehicles from the Toyota stable, across different countries in multiple continents.

In the last few decades, going on massive road trips has become easy due to the development of roads and facilities. However, with Toyota, it is about so much more as their quest is a journey in progress to understand the individual needs of each specific market where the drive has taken place.   

First-hand look 

Running a car manufacturing company has changed so much over the many decades. Gone are the days of adding fancy, pointless, features. Today it is about so much more — with the highest priority being given to the people who buy the cars and the roads they manoeuvre. To get a better understanding of this and answer the question, 'What makes a car better?', Toyota came up with the idea of the 5 Continent Drive.

Put simply, it’s Toyota’s quest to see and experience the roads, people and conditions first hand. Since this is a global initiative, it also provides an excellent opportunity for Toyota to allow its employees from around the world to interact with each other and get a perspective of other markets and the challenges of selling cars in that environment. 

Up until this point 

Toyota began its 5 Continent Drive in 2014 in Australia. The drivers were divided into three teams which circumnavigated the island continent over 72 days starting at Melbourne and travelling along the coast and finally returning to the city. This was followed by the North American leg in 2015 that saw four teams traverse roads in both US and Canada. The Latin America leg in 2016, at 20,000 km, was one of the longest and saw the teams cover all major nations of the continent. Looking to raise the bar even further, the European leg, in 2017, saw the teams drive 21,000 km with Portugal as the start point and Russia as the end. The year 2018 saw the teams enter Africa and despite being a smaller leg with just 10,600 km, they visited quite a few places and used a large number of SUVs as a part of the convoy.   

Hello India! 

2019 was Asia’s year and on that route is of course, India – a crucial market for the Japanese automaker. In September, Toyota, backed by its philosophy of QDR — Quality, Durability and Reliability — ventured out on a Quest to Discover the Real India. The ultimate aim was to understand the needs of their customers across the nation.

The 10-day quest started from Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s India plant at Bidadi in Karnataka and took them on a route that included Madikeri, Davanagere, Kolhapur, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Udaipur and Ajmer, before coming to a close in New Delhi. At the heart of this drive was the idea of ‘Roads train people and people build cars.’ The convoy travelled across diverse terrains in India, understood the needs of its customers and dealers, witnessed the nature of Indian roads and of course enjoyed themselves. India's leg turned out to be even more special as the Toyota employees were joined by members from Suzuki Motor Corporation. 

QDR

When you put quality, durability and reliability as the core reason for venturing out across a country, to understand it better, you are on the right track. What better way to find out and improve your products than to see them in action — understand what’s missing or lacking and work towards a solution that ensures customer satisfaction.

Fuelling this process was the Japanese philosophy ‘Genchi Genbutsu’ a.k.a the go-and-see approach — which is not just a term but a way of life at Toyota. Aided by this philosophy, Toyota’s engineers gained an in-depth understanding of real-life Indian road conditions —enabling them to improvise upon the smallest of issues, and improve the Toyota ownership experience. 

The stars of the show 

No quest is complete without crediting the stars and the stars of this show were quite a few. The head of the pack was, of course, a Toyota Land Cruiser 200 which was the symbol for this drive. Behind the LC200 was a massive convoy comprising of the Innova Crysta, Innova Touring Sport, Fortuner, Yaris, Corolla Altis, Camry Hybrid, the recently launched Glanza and the Suzuki Vitara Brezza — with each one representing various aspects of the Toyota thought process, in terms of the cars on offer in India. 

Learning for the future 

It has been five years since the drive began and the learnings from each leg are expected to have major benefits for Toyota’s buyers. They will get a chance to buy really good cars, which have been developed with the expertise and experience gained from this incredible journey.

Moving forward

The drive carried on to Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and culminated in Vietnam. There will also be a final leg in Japan which is expected to culminate in Tokyo just ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where Toyota is a worldwide top partner.

Watch the below videos to know more :

Full Recap : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seyZtPVRk9E&t=3s

The Toyota 5 Continent Drive was created with one goal in mind: to make ever-better cars for their customers. They traveled the length and breadth of this wonderful nation for 10 days to understand it better - the culture, the roads and, most importantly, you. 

Customer First : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRKXaK1RY0g

Toyota has always been a customer-first company. And behind the Toyota 5 Continent Drive's exhilarating 10-day journey across India was a singular, unified goal — to make ever-better cars for you. 

Made For India : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDkatCNhkdo

Toyota and India - a beautiful 20 year long journey with many more miles to cover. And the 5 Continent Drive was essential for to understand this wonderful country's ever-changing nature.

Ever Better Cars : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbmPere5o7k

Roads train people, people build cars. This was the mantra of the 5 Continent Drive, which enabled the team to travel passionately throughout the world with their signature go-and-see philosophy (genchi genbutsu) to find solutions that help make ever better cars for their customers.