There are a lot of speculations why the third generation Carina (the Toyota Carina A60) failed to sell in large numbers in Europe. One of them is that Datsun (aka Nissan) launched their new Bluebird 910 around the same time and offered a better pricing. This is partly true and this posting is about the other part which can be captured in the scan below:
I made this scan of a Dutch book about Honda and Toyota from the mid 80s. During this period the Carina II T150 was selling quite well while the Carina A60 already had been phased out.
The photos above are press photos distributed in the 80s by Toyota Netherlands (aka Louwman & Parqui) and you clearly see a difference in marketing: the old is marketed with a conservative mustached salesman-guy and the new with the streamlined (French) glider in the background. I don’t think the annotation of the photos need to be translated as they are similar. 😉
Notice the glider: I will come back to that later…
This is obviously not the only marketing they did, another example is this 1982 ad targeted at Ford Taunus drivers: Continue reading