Toyota has applied to trademark a raft of badges – including Tacoma and Tundra – in South Africa, despite the fact several of these models aren’t factory-built in RHD…
Well, this is interesting: Toyota has applied to trademark several badges in South Africa, including “Tacoma”, “Tundra” and “Highlander”. These models are, of course, not currently factory-built in right-hand-drive form.
Having spotted a report from carsales.com.au on Toyota’s recent trademark activity in fellow right-hand-drive market Australia, we decided to find out if similar applications had been made in South Africa. And we found plenty (13 in total, though we suspect our list is not at all exhaustive)…
Before we go on, we should point out – as we always do in such instances – that an application to protect a badge in a given market is by no means a guarantee that the automaker will use the nameplate in question. Sometimes, the company is simply safeguarding its intellectual property.
So, what did we discover? Well, over a couple of weeks from the end of October 2024 into the first half of November 2024, Toyota’s head office in Aichi, Japan filed to trademark the “Tacoma”, “Tundra”, “Sequoia” and “Sienna” badges in South Africa. These models are all sold in left-hand drive in North America.
As a reminder, the Tacoma and Tundra are Toyota’s Texas-built pick-up trucks (the Tacoma is similar in size to the Hilux), while the Sequoia is a full-size SUV based on the latter and likewise produced at the firm’s San Antonio facility. The Sienna, meanwhile, is a minivan manufactured in Indiana as well as in China (where it’s known as the Granvia, a badge incidentally registered in SA back in 2020).
We then found applications to protect the “Highlander” and “Venza” names in Mzansi. The former is an SUV made in Indiana and sold as the Kluger in Australia (interestingly, we found a recent local trademark filing for “Kluger”, too), while the latter is a Japanese-built crossover that’s also known as the Harrier in some markets.
Digging a little deeper, we furthermore unearthed trademark applications (all filed within the same short period) for various nameplates familiar from Toyota’s domestic market of Japan – which is, of course, a right-hand-drive country. These badges include “Alphard”, “Century”, “Noah”, “Sienta”, “Vellfire” and “Voxy”.
Of course, all of these trademark applications by Toyota are just that – applications. So, they certainly don’t indicate that the brand’s local division has any active plans to launch these products in South Africa. But it’s nevertheless fascinating that Toyota’s head office has seen fit to expand the protection of these nameplates to our market…
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