I Can't Stop Playing With Toyota's Japanese Car Configurator

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grandea GTR
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What do you think of having a wide range of options on cars?

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Grandea GTR

Grandea GTR

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That_sneaky_azN
Usually, whenever I want to just kill time, I check out car website's build and price section. A few days ago, I decided to go ahead and get on Toyota's website to check out the new Yaris, and just build it. out of curiosity, I decided to check out the Japanese version for the new Vitz, annnnnnd..... Let me give you an interpretation of what was going on through my head:

"OMG WHAT 4WD"

"LOOK AT ALL THESE COLOURS"​

"LOOK AT AAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL THESE OPTIONS!!!"​

"ALL THESE CARS I CAN CUSTOMIZE..."

I cannot stop playing around with the car configurator. I just amuses me so to see all the options I can choose and how it would look on the car!

But it disappoints me so that we hardly even have these options here in the states, and I would not mind giving my car an edgy look!
 
The Ferrari and Maserati configurators are great too, you can even change the stitching color on the seats. More options are a great idea. Unfortunately most US dealers only stock whats popular. If you really want a car a certain way, you have to special order it.
 
This made me try some car configurators on different car manufacturers Finnish websites. I liked BMW has quite nice configurator, because it gives 360° interior view of the car you have customized. Then I decided to see what options were available for M3 and learned that with all extras it costs over 160,000€ and 50,000€ of that price is due to car taxing.
 
Well, yea. Google translate sucks, but still. A ton of the stuff added the word "garnish." It was like I was making food, not choosing parts for a car :lol:
 
titleguy1
Well, yea. Google translate sucks, but still. A ton of the stuff added the word "garnish." It was like I was making food, not choosing parts for a car :lol:
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Well, garnish is a part of a car as well :lol:
 
titleguy1
Wait, I can eat cars now? o-o
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No, lol! A garnish is kinda like a plating on the car. You know the chrome strip that spans between the taillights on a the trunk in some cars? That's a garnish.
 
I HATE options, seriously. Even transmission choice and colour. Henry Ford and his Model T were right. You constantly second-guess yourself as though you have picked an inferior, context-incorrect or overpriced configuration. This is why I love most special and limited editions, and the previous Lexus LS series (maybe the new series is similarly very limited in feature selection).

'Accessories' are even more of an anxiety trip. Every time I look at them in brochures I stress wondering, if I was actually looking to buy the car, which accessories I should overpay for (minus the needless car cleaning items) because I know that they will be impossible to find five years from now.

It's also probably why, unless I ever get super wealthy, I will never buy a luxury car, at least new, which LOVE to offer options that run up to the price of the car. But then the best combinations are often very rare on the used market, so if you don't buy those combinations new, you could spend years searching for it again in the used market, and if you do find one it might well be molested or in bad shape.

As such, I use heuristics like:

  • If the car is sport oriented, it has to be a manual, unless there is no manual available.
  • Gloss colours should appear only on non-luxury cars, unless the luxury car is also a sports variant.
  • Aluminium and other non-wood trims should only appear on sports variants, and vice versa
  • If a particular variant comes in an exclusive colour, it should be purchased in that colour
  • Optional wheels should not be fitted unless that wheel is optional only to that variant, and not standard on any other variant (e.g., it's okay to fit optional 17" wheels to a base luxury car, but not the 18" wheels from the next model up).
  • Non-luxury cars or cars which are not the luxury variant should not be black
  • Lexus has a habit of selling confused 'Sports Luxury' models. I think Merc might too. Given the above points, this is literally my idea of a nightmare.

There are plenty more.


P.S: Australian car website configurators tend to suck. Mercedes AU has still not updated their site with the W205 C-Class configurator, despite the car being out for some time, at least in Europe, and despite my emails.
 
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Grandea GTR
But it disappoints me so that we hardly even have these options here in the states, and I would not mind giving my car an edgy look!
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Just tell the dealer you want those options, it's as simple as that. Toyota are a world-wide company and salespeople are salespeople. They'll even give you right-hand-drive if you ask :D
 
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