Toyota won’t follow Mitsubishi and MG with a longer new car warranty, standing firm beside its five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty in Australia.
The warranty wars hotted up earlier this year when Chinese brand MG boosted its seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty to 10 years and 250,000 kilometres, usurping Mitsubishi’s conditional 10-year, 200,000km offering.
Kia, Skoda, SsangYong, and GWM offer seven years of coverage, while Isuzu Ute has six years of warranty coverage.
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Toyota offers a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty like most of its rivals, although that extends to seven years on the drivetrain if the vehicle is serviced on time in the Toyota dealer network.
Toyota Australia vice president of sales and marketing Sean Hanley told media the brand has “no intentions of increasing our current coverage”.
“We believe our current warranty coverage is adequate,” he said.
“We did increase it some years ago. The laws of the country that we operate in called the Australian Consumer Law, really take care of warranty anyhow, so there’s absolutely no need for … a consumer in Australia to be concerned about a product when the realities are we’re governed by Australian Consumer Law.
“We have our own warranty, and beyond that we have other regulatory requirements. From Toyota’s perspective our warranty coverage is solid, we don’t leave people behind. We stick by our quality, durability, reliability.”
Hyundai Australia led the charge for five-year warranties, introducing its then-market leading coverage in 1999.
Kia subsequently introduced a seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty in 2014, with companies like GWM and SsangYong subsequently following suit.
Honda and Jeep launched five-year warranties in 2017, followed by Ford, Mazda and Volkswagen in 2018. Subaru and Toyota also launched five-year warranty programs early in 2019.
In the luxury world, Genesis launched in Australia with a five-year warranty in 2019, while Mercedes-Benz Australia upped its three-year warranty to five years in 2020. It was followed by Volvo in the same year.
Jaguar Land Rover jumped in 2021, as did Lexus, while Audi made the leap in January 2022. Alfa Romeo followed in the middle of 2022.
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