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*By: Carla Pegg
My FJ Cruiser Ambassador experience was an awesome one. I really enjoyed it and am rather sad that it is all over.
We were lucky enough to be sent to Cape Town to be at the J&B Met.
It was great that we were able to drive around in the FJ Cruiser in Cape Town. I still love that car. It definitely suits Cape Town, although I did notice there were fewer of them around than in Johannesburg. So we once again got the attention of other drivers on the road as well as pedestrians.
The first-generation Toyota Avanza was a pioneering ‘no-frills’ compact MPV that delivered exactly what it promised on the tin – it got as many people as possible from one place to another in comfort. However, the all-new Avanza which goes on sale on the 6th February 2012 has upped the ante considerably by going big: it’s big on style, big on space and big on comfort.
Toyota NS4
Toyota recently unveiled the NS4 advanced plug-in hybrid concept vehicle at the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. The NS4 signifies Toyota’s vision for future mobility with a focus on connectivity and the human interface. Toyota engineers were challenged to design a new mid-sized concept for potential global market introduction by 2015. The NS4 concept is a dedicated plug-in hybrid, separate from the Prius family, designed with future mobility requirements in mind.
Dream finish for the Imperial Toyota team at the 2012 Dakar Rally.
By Toyota_Blogger on 2012-01-16 11:17
Dream finish to the Dakar 2012. Team Imperial Toyota concluded their maiden foray into the ultimate test of endurance with a 3rd place for Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz in the number 301 Hilux, an 11th place for Duncan Vos and Rob Howie in the number 313 sister car, while the team Overdrive entered South African Hilux of Lucio Alvarez and Andy Graue finished 6th in the 2012 edition of the Dakar – Argentina, Chile, Peru.
What a boytjie ! Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz led the last real stage of the 2012 Dakar until confusion at a waypoint caused them to slip back to a second place for the day, cementing their 3rd place overall. Dirk von Zitzewitz: “..we were on km 240 where there was supposed to be a waypoint, but it did not come up. We could see bike tracks to our left, the West and went looking for the waypoint in that direction. We saw a helicopter had landed there, at a big drop off that was not on the road book – because we weren't supposed to be there.
Peru provides toughest challenge. If anyone thought that the Atacama ended in Chile, they were proven wrong today, on day 13, stage 12 of the Dakar. Not long after the cars disappeared into the seaside dunes, the running order started to change tales of woe started to emerge from the dunes. Conditions were not what most people expected.
Giniel de Villiers: “These were the trickiest dunes we've had so far, anything could happen out there. They're not that big, but steep and tricky, very, very difficult.”
Time to keep it all together. With only three stages to go, all three the South African Hilux's are in the top ten, with Giniel in third place. Today's stage from Arica to Arequipa was another long, harsh trek through the Atacama, alternating between steep rocky climbs and the perils of fesh-fesh.
Giniel finished 4th, Duncan 9th and Lucio 10th, to not only finish inside the top ten, but to also keep all three vehicles in the top ten overall. As on previous days, the Imperial Toyota's ran like clockwork, making their music across the desert without any major mechanical trouble.
The Dakar starts to bite. The terrain for today's 11th stage was very hard on the cars and their crews. Now, firmly in the second week of the race, attrition has become a fact of life for many of the competitors. The organisers, who are familiar with the ways of the Dakar, has taken this into account and the bivouacs have been getting steadily smaller as the race progressed.
It is hard to imagine a more desolate landscape than the one the teams traversed today. Barren and vast, the entire Atacama is inhospitable and unforgiving.
On track and getting stronger. Stage nine on day ten of the Dakar was a 400km sprint across hard, stony tracks which ended in soft sand and the iconic 2,5km descent down a steep dune face into the Iquique bivouac.
Settling down. Today's 8th stage of the 2012 Dakar was a day of consolidation for team Imperial Toyota. The long hard stretches (some of the straights were in excess of 20km long) showed that the Imperial Toyota Hilux's lacked the straight line speed to beat the unrestricted Hummers and turbo-diesel Minis. On the positive side, the three South African Toyotas finished 6th (Giniel), 9th (Lucio) and 10th (Duncan), the first time that all the cars finished in the top ten.
