Sydney City Toyota
CITY EXTRA
Yaris GR “tag along tours” One of the first buyers of the sensational new Toyota GR Yaris from Sydney City Toyota is planning to run tag-along tours for owners of all Toyota GR sports cars. Vic Widman owns Great Divide Tours, one of Australia’s most active off-road tour companies, and he’s a true car enthusiast. And our very first buyer of the spectacular GR Yaris is likely to be his first club member. Elmar Shar owns the consumer opinion website, productreview.com.au and for the past 13 years he’s owned a 1.5 litre manual transmission Yaris as his daily drive. Elmar doesn’t describe himself as a car enthusiast. “When I saw the GR Yaris advertised at its introductory price I thought it was a good deal,” Elmar said. “It was a bit of a shock when I first drove it. “It had such sheer power it took a week to get used to it.” The 200kW 1.6 litre turbo GR Yaris has been hailed as the new, definitive performance hatch; ideal for Vic who already owns one of the original Toyota 86 sports cars. Vic’s nephew is Luke King, the Toyota 86 Racing series star sponsored by Sydney City Toyota, so the stars have aligned for the pair to plan special track days for GR owners as an addition to Vic’s off-road adventure drives.
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Vic Wildman from Great Divide Tours & Sydney City Dealer Principal John Roca. Elmar wants to tag along: “Put me down for it,” he said. “I must admit I was heartbroken when I traded my 13-yearold Yaris (bought new from Sydney City Toyota), but now I can’t wait to find out more about my new GR.” Elmar has already reviewed his GR Yaris on his product review website, which gets four million views a month. Vic is waiting for travel restrictions to lift so he can resume his four-wheel drive tag-along tours. Before COVID-19 he was arranging 250 adventure drives each year across Australia and New Zealand as well as Africa and Iceland.
Toyotas are our bread and butter At Sydney City Toyota we love fresh bakery products with our coffee – and that’s led us to partner with Australia’s first social enterprise bakery, which is adding not only to our local contribution, but also to our waistlines! It’s called The Bread & Butter Project, and at their bakery just down the road from us in Marrickville, this thriving not-forprofit organisation is training refugees and asylum seekers in the art of baking delicious sourdough breads and pastries. The Bread & Butter Project commenced in 2013, after renowned Sydney chef and baker Paul Allam and his wife Jessica Grynberg, co-founders of the famed Bourke Street Bakery, visited a group of refugee women at an orphanage on the Thai-Burmese border and taught them to bake bread. And that helped to create an independent social enterprise for refugees and people seeking asylum in Australia. The program, which invests 100% of its profits into training and employment pathways for its trainees,
The Bread & Butter Project’s Philip Hoban, General Manager (right) & Christian Ortland, Production Coordinator (left).
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can train up to 30 new bakers each year. So far 45 professional artisan bakers have been employed in the hospitality industry. Trainees have come from a range of countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Fiji. If you’d like to get your hands on The Bread & Butter Project’s amazing products, you can find them at selected Harris Farm Markets and Woolworths Metro stores, including the new Park Sydney store in Erskineville. We’re proud to be offering this incredible organisation our support by supplying them with a Sydney City Toyota vehicle, which is used by their sales team to make customer visits, and pretty soon they’ll be upgrading their small delivery fleet with our help. And honestly, we also can’t wait for their weekly delivery to us. To find out more, visit thebreadandbutterproject.com
Fuel cells the way of the future
We’re on excited standby for the delivery to Sydney City Toyota of the first of the next generation of Toyota Mirai, a development of the electric-hybrid technology which has seen Toyota deliver 85 percent of all electrified vehicles in Australia. Last year Toyota delivered almost 55,000 hybrids to our guests – a quarter of all our deliveries. The stylish new Mirai is something else – a fuel cell electric vehicle with three discretely placed hydrogen tanks on board and comfortable seating for five people. You won’t see a tail pipe because its only emission is water. It’s not yet for sale, but we will be helping Toyota place
the 20 Mirais which have made it to Australia with private companies and government organisations, to continue the roll-out of this important technology. We’re committed to accelerating electrification of cars, but their take up depends on the development of EV charge points and hydrogen refueling stations. Toyota has built a solar-powered hydrogen production site and refueling station at its Centre of Excellence in Melbourne, to show what can be done. Just having the Mirai on our showroom floor - however briefly – is a sign that Toyota is truly leading the way in the cars we’ll all be driving in the next decade.
Telethon delivered again, in partnership with Channel 9 COVID -19 did its best to stop the annual telethon, to raise funds for the Sydney Children’s Hospitals, but Channel 9 found a way. In three hours over the holiday period the channel led the charge which ultimately raised $4.6 million. Each year better than 72,000 kids are treated at SCH, and they need our continued support. Here at Sydney City Toyota, we take a lot of pride in raising funds to help. In 2020 as the world went into lockdown, so we held a simple ceremony and delivered a cheque to SCH to keep our care undiminished. Here’s hoping in 2021 we’ll be back to normal.
Allan Dabbagh, General Manager, Sales & Marketing Sydney City Toyota and Michal Cohen-Nobel, Corporate Relationship Manager -Sydney Children’s Hospital.
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Brian’s contribution is remarkable “Join the motor industry and earn BIG money a year” – the advertisement, almost 20 years ago, was enough to catch the eye of young real estate salesman Brian Rochester. “But it didn’t quite live up to its promise,” Brian, now Sydney City Toyota’s senior sales manager, new cars and fifteen years with our company, laughs. “I lasted just 18months in that job and didn’t enjoy it for a lot of reasons and I was pleased to get out of there – but then a mate of mine said: What about Toyota’. It was a revelation. “Toyota is not just about the brand and the cars, it’s the whole philosophy – I call it integrity and respect,” Brian said. “And Sydney City Toyota is at the top of the list.” Brian swears its true – good staff and good customers (guests) are what attracted him to Sydney City Toyota and kept him here.
“It was always the case - so obvious when I first joined,” he said. “Since then, a lot has been refined in terms of customer care with the introduction of policies like ‘Customers For Life.’ But, I see those improvements as just a change in vocabulary. The basics have always been there. “We’ve got good people – poor people don’t last long. And we have a lot of return business.” Brian has around 15 people reporting to him and by rights, he should no longer be selling – but he loves getting on the floor, demonstrating and delivering. “It keeps me sharp – and there’s a real buzz in delivering a car to a happy customer,” he said. And after hours – nothing better than a game of golf with his two teenage sons. There’s a family history there - Brian’s late dad Tom designed the Kareela Golf Course, built it out of landfill – and now Brian’s struggling to stay one stroke ahead of his boys.
Sydney City Dealer Principal John Roca with Senior Sales Toyota Manager Brian Rochester.
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Royale Limousine founder John Bartolotta with Con Hatzivasiliou, General Manager - Service, Sydney City Toyota.
John Bartolotta - Resetting the hire car industry One of our oldest and most trusted guests, John Bartolotta has spent the last twelve months reimaging how the allimportant hire car industry will function in the second year of COVID-19, and how it will expand beyond.
The pandemic encouraged Royale to accelerate the adoption of technology to help it improve its operational services and especially, to service its own clients even better.
Far from being a luxury service – although that’s certainly a part of its appeal – the hire car industry performs an essential function for the elderly, infirmed and under pandemic restrictions as an alternative to public transport.
John said he’d relied on his “very good business partners”, all of whom had been affected by the pandemic to work together to find a way through the changed conditions.
John Bartolotta, as well as being the principal of Royale Limousines , is also chairman of the NSW Hire Car Association. “The industry suffered badly in 2020, especially when you consider better than 80 percent of its demand comes from airports,” John told us when he visited Sydney City Toyota as part of his fleet reassessment. “It was important to reset our entire company (and the industry) to service our essential customers by becoming far more efficient.” John started Royale Limousines in 1989, and he’s been an important guest of ours ever since. Royale runs a fleet of 25 Toyota Coaster buses across Australia, and recently it’s also acquired the Toyota Granvia eight-seater people mover – a vehicle of which John speaks highly. “We’ve reduced our overall fleet size, but we’ve maintained our Toyota fleet because of their reliability, their efficiency to run and importantly because they hold their residual values,” John said.
“Royale is a major supplier to Star Entertainment and we’ve jointly devised a means of servicing their needs,” he said. “I’m grateful to partners like Sydney City Toyota. “They’ve helped us with additional vehicles when we’ve needed them, maintaining our fleet and offering financial services on extended terms to get us through.” John forecasts 2021 to be a challenging year and is excited about the arrival of vaccine which will assist to open international borders in 2022. Through it all, he’s remained positive. “Our business has been around more than 30 years and we’ve used the last year to reset for the next 30,” he said.
City Extra readers will receive a 10% discount on booking with Royale Limousines. Visit www.royalelimousines.com.au and enter the following code when you choose ‘other’ in the service required field – CITYEXTRA10
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How to videos Sydney City Toyota wants to take care of all its guests every way it can. We’re here to service all your automotive needs, but just in case you need assistance while you’re away from us we’ve put together some ‘How To’ videos to provide you with a guide. Here’s the first two of the series.
Change a tyre
Fluid Maintenance
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Genuine window of opportunity A note from Dealer Principal John Roca. The next six months provide an incredible opportunity for our guests to minimize their change over price on a new Toyota and retain equity in their car for their next purchase after that. The value of pre-owned vehicles has increased on average better than 20 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic. That means a trade-in is worth so much more than it did in pre-COVID times. As an example, at Sydney City Toyota, we recently traded a Yaris for $8,500 which had been valued at just $6,000 a year ago. Admittedly we weren’t able to offer as much discount on the new car our guest was buying, but it’s the change-over, price that counts – and that was far more advantageous than it would have been in normal circumstances. We are experiencing a market anomaly and it can’t last for long – I believe another six months at best. By the fourth quarter, the new car market will have stabilized, and we’ll be back to having sufficient new vehicle stock to meet our guests’ requirements. And that means the value of pre-owned vehicles will reduce to realistic levels.
It all came about because the pandemic created an expectation that new car demand would drop whereas exactly the opposite occurred. Demand increased – people found they had income to spare because they weren’t travelling at exactly the time interest rates dropped to near all- time lows. The two factors created a perfect storm of opportunity, and the motor industry was caught with too little new stock, forcing up the value of quality trade-ins. Some of our guests rethought their entire financial commitments. People who had packaged their car loan with their house mortgage were quick to separate them as they realized that they’d be paying too much to service their automotive component. Under no circumstances could you say that COVID-19 has been beneficial. In so many ways, it’s been tragic. But at least we’ve all adapted to get through. Stay safe, John Roca.
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Sydney City Toyota GLEBE 36-38 Parramatta Road Glebe, NSW 2037 T 02 9565 6313
Sydney City Toyota WATERLOO 824 Bourke Street Waterloo, NSW 2017 T 02 9690 9999
www.sydneycitytoyota.com.au