Upstart Brand Toyo Tires Making Inroads in ON

Many drivers in our province are not very familiar with the brand Toyo Tires but this tire company has built a solid reputation in Canada and around the world. 

If you happen to live in the Toronto GTA area, which includes Oshawa, Whitby, Pickering and Ajax, you are much more likely to have run across the brand at some point or another simply because of the increased number of vehicles fitted with the Toyo brand.

Toyo has been making inroads for many years in the Canadian market and is probably best known for its Open Country tire for Off Road enthusiasts. Actually, Toyo has had an official presence in Canada for nearly 30 years but the majority of its operations are in the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania, having started business over 65 years ago.

In North America, tire dealers have voted Toyo Tires as the number one overall brand on several occasions. (I recently blogged about the 2012 Tire Brand Study.) According to Toyo themselves, “our consumer tires have been voted #1 Overall Brand by North American tire dealers an unprecedented seven times since 2000.”

Very recently, Toyo Tire U.S.A. announced its all-season A24 had been selected as OE (original equipment) tire on the fully redesigned 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport crossover. Becoming OE supplier for new vehicles is a great way to get established in the marketplace and because this is the first OE Mitsubishi fitment in the U.S. and Canada for Toyo, it means more penetration and a brighter future.

Mitsubishi’s most popular model is the Outlander Sport and all trim levels of the 2013 Outlander Sport come standard with all season Toyo A24 tires, size P225/55R18, on 18-inch aluminum wheels. Apparently the great fuel economy of the Outlander (31 mpg) is due partly to the hi tech design of the A24 tire, even though it boasts a 148-hp, 2.0-liter MIVEC engine.

The most popular consumer product lines for the Toyo brand are Proxes (for high performance passenger cars, light trucks and race cars), Open Country (for light trucks and SUVs), Versado (for luxury passenger cars), and Extensa (high value tire for passenger cars and minivans). Many of the tires are built in the United States at their state-of-the-art factory in Bartow County, Georgia.