Toyota is adopting a fairer order system for new-car buyers

Toyota has re-opened the order books for the popular GR Yaris and also announced a new ‘first in-first out’ approach to allocating cars that could slash wait times.

The new order system, which will allocate cars to customers based on the date they place their order, will first be trialled on all GR performance models from June production, but Toyota already has plans to roll it out to models from its regular range too.

The hope is the change will help reduce the long wait times that still impact several of Toyota’s most popular model lines.

“Here’s an update for GR Yaris enthusiasts,” Toyota Australia’s vice president of sales and marketing Sean Hanley told Wheels. “From today, we’re re-opening the order books. They’ve been closed so the really great news is that we’ve got stock in dealerships right now.”

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Hanley confirmed the new arrival of stock is for the current GR Yaris, with the heavily updated and more powerful 2025 model slated to begin production later this year.

“Having sports cars in hot demand is fantastic, we’re proud, we’re enthusiastic about it,” added Hanley, “although it can pose a challenge as to how you allocate the limited stock you have. I’d like to say that’s just about GR but quite frankly it’s been for Toyota as well generally speaking.”

The new ‘first in/first out’ ordering system comes as a direct learning from the huge supply disruptions that hit Toyota during the Covid-19 pandemic, says Hanley.

“We’ve learned a lot on that journey,” he said. “It hasn’t all been bad for us and it’s great having the demand. What we do need to do is getting at how we allocate and how we manage that experience. That’s the learning we’ve taken out.

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“We always strive for a customer-first approach… so I’m pleased to announce that – for all GR performance cars – we’re moving to a first-in-first-out approach. That means – effective July production – we’ll be prioritising the delivery of cars to customers, based on the date they place their order.

It’s the fairest way given the normalisation of supply. And we are deploying that across a number of Toyota models as well right now but it’s a process because have legacy systems we have to change.”

Toyota has enjoyed huge demand for its GR models in Australia. Since launching the brand here in late-September 2019, Toyota has sold 1171 examples of the GR Supra and almost 2600 units of the GR Yaris.

The GR 86 has moved 22,000 cars, while the GR Corolla has found more than 800 homes so far.