Toyota Harrier gets 45,000 orders for first month in Japan – 15 times projected monthly sales volume

The Toyota Harrier is certainly well received in the brand’s home market. It has accumulated around 45,000 orders for the Harrier in the first month since its launch in Japan, or 15 times its projected monthly sales of 3,100 units, Asahi Shimbun reported.

The greater-than-expected popularity of the latest Harrier means that the orders will take up to five months to be delivered, the automaker told the Japanese news outlet. At launch, the Harrier has been priced in Japan from 2,990,000 yen (RM119,638) for the base 2.0 litre S variant, up to 5,040,000 yen (RM201,495) for the 2.5 litre hybrid E-Four Z variant with the Leather Package.

The Harrier nameplate was first launched in Japan in the late Nineties, though it didn’t start out as a standalone Toyota model, instead it was twinned with the Lexus RX as the firm’s luxury SUV entrant. More than 370,000 units of the RX were sold in just five years, and the Harrier/RX parallel continued into the second generation dubbed the XU30.

The Harrier is known in the North American market as the Venza

The third generation was where the two diverged, as the Lexus RX continued with the Toyota K platform, while the third-generation XU60 Harrier instead adopted the slightly smaller Toyota MC platform, though this also underpinned a wide variety of models from the Prius through to the Alphard, as well as the Lexus LM. This also meant that while the RX continued with a selection of V6 engines, the Harrier made do with a 2.0 litre four-cylinder unit.

The debut of the latest, fourth-generation Harrier sees it brought back up to size with the GA-K platform of Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) origin, which underpins the likes of the XV70 Toyota Camry, XZ10 Lexus ES, XX50 Toyota Avalon, and XA50 Toyota RAV4.

The Harrier is known as the Venza for the North American market, where the Venza gets the 2.5 litre hybrid engine as the sole powertrain of choice; the Japanese-market Harrier gets 218 PS hybrid driveline (E-Four variants get 222 PS) as well as the 2.0 litre petrol engine with 171 PS and 207 Nm of torque.

GALLERY: 2020 Toyota Harrier

GALLERY: 2021 Toyota Venza

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