Buy from authorized dealers-Toyota advises car buyers

Toyota Ghana Company Ltd, dealers in the popular Toyota brand of cars in Ghana is advising potential car buyers to buy only genuine Toyota cars tropicalised for our weather conditions and available in their showrooms.

Expressing worry about the little care shown by potential car owners to the design and specification of their cars to meet the tropical condition in Ghana, officials of the company said most of the Toyota cars found in the numerous second-hand car garages in the country are not tropicalised.

Speaking to the dailyEXPRESS, Public Relations Officer Ama Asante stressed that apart from Toyota Ghana being the only authorized distributor of the Toyota brand in Ghana, the cars in their garage are well tropicalized with a lot of excellent specifications that inure to the comfort and benefit of the customer.

Home-used or second-hand car garages have been on the increase with several cars of all makes and shapes being imported into the country. Among the most popular brands are Toyota, Honda, Infinity, Nissan and Volkswagen (VW).

Due to the relatively lower prices of these used cars in the road-side garages, patronage is extremely high. The Toyota brand in particular is among the fast selling cars in these garages due to their durability and performance, apparently taking market away from Toyota Ghana (the authorized dealers).

The company however insists that some of the Toyota cars are made with different specifications to meet different types of conditions in the countries they are made for.

Ms Asante noted that the condition of roads in Africa is extremely different from those in Europe, so the cars found in their garage are well suspended and better designed to meet the African condition while those found in the numerous road-side garages have lower suspension and are not good for the roads in Ghana.

“…if we bring a car in which the suspension specification was not built to operate here in Africa and although it might work with time it will become very faulty.”

Ms Asante added that some of the Toyota cars being imported into the country might have different fuel specifications because the fuel samples are designed to suit different conditions. She said European cars are designed to contain fuel with high level of octane as the fuels there have octane levels of up to 98 while the octane level in the fuel in Ghana is between 92-95 which is likely to affect the performance of the car.

Despite the astronomical cost of brand new cars in the shops of authorized dealers, Ms Asante insists that it is still better and economical for customers to buy from them because their vehicles come with a full-year's warranty. This she said is a benefit customers will never enjoy in the road-side car shops.

Ms Asante added that customers can also benefit from other special trade deals such as exchanging an old car for a new one, once the customer buys the car from Toyota Ghana.