That means more traffic, narrower roads, potholes and flooded streets during the monsoon season. Yet the concept of the Asian Car has its skeptics. Some wonder whether the whole idea is more about style than substance, a simple marketing ploy to attract attention. Jon Bonnell, a consultant for Automotive Resources Asia in Bangkok, feels that Toyota s candidate, the Soluna, is Asian only in the sense that it is made by a Japanese company from parts sourced in the region. Design-wise, there may be only small differences between the Soluna and some other model due to hit U.S. streets.
More important questions come to mind.
Despite its doubters and detractors, the Asian Car chugs on. Until this decade, Asian car buyers outside Japan had been too few to warrant special attention. But with the middle class now burgeoning across the region and trade liberalization trimming car prices, Asia-specific models are starting to become economically feasible. Given time, the markets may even get big enough to make it worthwhile to tailor models to individual countries. For all the excitement over Asia s potential, most Asians still do not have as much money to spend on cars than, say, North Americans.