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Drive your dream with Bowater Toyota

New Toyota Levin adds to Corolla appeal

Corolla Levin ZR

This review appeared in the Nelson Mail January 17th and comes from the Stuff Website: written by motoring writer Rob Maetzig, using our own photos.


OK, let's get this out of the way first - the new Toyota Corolla Levin is not named after the capital of Horowhenua, even though the town is just a few kilometres south of Toyota New Zealand's head office in Palmerston North.

And anyway, if the car was named after the town of Levin it would probably have to be pronounced Levene, because apparently that was the preferred pronounciation by the family of William Levin, a director of the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company after whom the town is named.

But if that happened, people would probably get all confused over whether they were buying a car or a tin of paint ...

Seriously though, in the case of the new 11th generation Toyota Corolla, the Levin badging is the revival of a name that was attached to some sporty Corollas that began to be produced from 1970. It's actually an Old English word that translates to "lightning".

None of these Levins was ever sold new in New Zealand, so the fact that two Levin models - SX and ZR - are included in the new range makes rather good marketing sense.

It is all golden at the Takaka A&P Show

The sun shone and Golden Bay put on a cracker of a day for the annual Golden Bay A&P Show held in Takaka last weekend.

Bowater Toyota headed over to the show grounds to present to the locals, and many holiday makers, the cream of the crop of what Toyota has to offer.
From left, the BMG Toyota 86, the all new 2013 Toyota Corolla Hatch, a Landcruiser 200 Series wagon and the new Toyota Landcruiser 70 Series Double Cab.

Golden Bay show

It was an early start for the Bowater's team, but none could be happier than our new sales person Jayne Collier, who had the enviable task of driving the BMG Toyota 86 over the Takaka Hill.....

Jayne leaves the radio behind to join our team

Jayne Collier

After a couple of years of being our local Radio Station advertising account manager at The Radio Network, Jayne Collier decided to unleash her passion for cars and come join the friendly team at Bowater Toyota.

She has started this week as our new salesperson in our Nelson branch, and is very excited to be able to share her enthusiam for motoring.
Jayne has always had a great love of cars, having grown up in a staunchly Toyota motoring family. Her father would only ever buy Toyota's and instilled the same brand loyalty into Jayne.

With the launch of the Toyota 86 the attraction to start as a salesperson became too great Jayne jokes, saying that joining the team was the only way Bowater Toyota CEO Tony Bowater would let her drive it!

Our salesman Chae wins national training award

toyota corolla hatchThe release late last year of the 11th generation 2013 Toyota Corolla was quite a big thing for Toyota. The Corolla is New Zealand's favourite car, and the biggest selling car model...... (your best Jeremy Clarkson internal voice please)....IN THE WORLD!

When any new model is launched there is a fair bit sales training that goes along with it from Toyota. Dealerships have to make sure that all salespeople are totally up to speed with all of the ins and outs of each car variant in the range. This can be quite a task, each new model has tweaks to the previous year, some models have completely new features. When it comes to generational, or face-lift models like the new 2013 Corolla Hatch, the changes are even more dramatic.

Toyota New Zealand's Sales Training guru, Igino Quattrucci tours the country giving all of the Toyota Sales teams advanced training on each new vehicle launch. Part of this training is a series of role plays in which members of the sales team play prospective customers asking a series of random questions to other sales team members. Sounds complicated? It isn't, but what it does do is create a scenario where each salesperson is put in a situation with a customer full of questions. The sales team learn how to answer these questions and how to bring into the conversation important features that customers need to be made aware of.

This is important training within the Toyota way of doing things, so imagine our pride when one of our sales team, Chae Baird-Booth, was awarded a prize for one of the best presentations during Igino's nationwide tour. 

Chae Baird-Booth
Bowater Toyota Salesman Chae Baird-Booth with his gift voucher for Best Corolla Presentation.

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