You almost stumbled across the reason Toyotas are so prevalent in the third world but you missed it because it doesn't fit your biases.
A running vehicle is a hot commodity in that part of the world and with cheap labor they can fix just about anything.
So why was that Mitsubishi not fixed and running? Why is every other car in Brazil a Ford? Why do you pretty much never see a Hilux in Russia (much to the consternation of the fanboys who think it would fit well in a rural country like that)?
Supply chain.
Toyota does not make seals. They do not make bearings. They do not forge and roll their own steel. They buy the same parts everyone else in the business does. Toyota was the only major brand to pay the poor equatorial nations any attention for a long time. They were the only ones who did the hard work to establish the business relationships needed to get their service parts into the poor parts of the world. As a result of this their vehicles are the preference of the poor parts of the world, because they are the ones you can actually get the parts for.
Toyota are more reliable AND they have a great supply chain with cheap parts.
You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell. Your implied assumption is that drivers in harsh environments (say outback Australia) care more about supply chain for parts than reliability - ummmm no - they have experience in what is reliable and they intelligently buy accordingly, even though Toyota is not the cheapest to buy.
Toyota is one of the few brands that actually mean something about quality of reliability: https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe... is a 2016 article about older cars that shows reliability (Toyota doesn’t appear on the no-start list) and “Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard, even though the list is dominated by compact and mid-sized sedans. Toyota completely avoids the the most expensive models list.”.
>You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell.
So you're calling Jeep reliable?
That's surprising coming from someone who's clearly drank the Toyota koolaid.
>“Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard
These are not low cost vehicles. That's just farcical.
Furthermore, Toyota specifically avoids running good financing deals in the NA market for brand image reasons and to manipulate the secondary (used) market (basically to keep low class people from getting their hands on them and over time dumping a bunch of trashed examples on the used market dragging down the brand image e.g. Nissan Altima). Per your commentary this has clearly been very effective.
To me those appear to be more non-sequitur arguments. And I am not from the USA, so your comments are parochially myopic.
> So you're calling Jeep reliable?
Jesus no. I remember an acquaintance taking his 4WD Jeep out mud-plugging: clutch stopped working because the slave cylinder cracked — cylinder cracked because the clutch slave cylinder was poorly made and it was made out of plastic. More importantly, 4WD vehicles that sell to urban purchasers in the USA mean nothing to the context of relying on a 4WD in remote areas. Down under, Toyota is popular in outback Australia, where an unreliable vehicle is a big problem and potentially could kill you. Toyota is also popular for their reliability on farms in New Zealand (even though farms in New Zealand are mostly not so remote that reliability is a safety issue).
> low cost vehicles
Admittedly unclear, but the quotes from the linked article are talking about low cost maintenance; nothing to do purchase price. The article is obviously predominantly urban USA, because that was the only factual source I could find that wasn’t just opinion. Maintenance costs are a proxy measurement for reliability. Often maintenance costs are dominated by hours worked in my experience, so “cheap” parts cannot explain why older Toyota vehicles remain cheaper to maintain.
From what I understood, different models of Landcruiser, which can sometimes look completely different, still tend to use mostly the same components. All specifically to make it easy to maintain the things.
Honestly, that story about the guy on the camel is probably true. A Landcruiser that has finally broken down is still a source of parts for other Landcruisers.
I'd love to peer inside how Toyota made this happen at the nuts and bolts operational level. How do they deal with all the currency conversion between all the nations? What language do they transact in? How do they deal with shipping? That would be so fascinating to understand.
A running vehicle is a hot commodity in that part of the world and with cheap labor they can fix just about anything. So why was that Mitsubishi not fixed and running? Why is every other car in Brazil a Ford? Why do you pretty much never see a Hilux in Russia (much to the consternation of the fanboys who think it would fit well in a rural country like that)?
Supply chain.
Toyota does not make seals. They do not make bearings. They do not forge and roll their own steel. They buy the same parts everyone else in the business does. Toyota was the only major brand to pay the poor equatorial nations any attention for a long time. They were the only ones who did the hard work to establish the business relationships needed to get their service parts into the poor parts of the world. As a result of this their vehicles are the preference of the poor parts of the world, because they are the ones you can actually get the parts for.