Caravan To Cross Central Asia & Caucasus

Tokyo―TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) today held a departure ceremony for a five-vehicle caravan that will spend a month crossing central Asia. The ceremony, held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, was attended by Japanese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Hidekata Mitsuhashi, and other honored guests. Following the ceremony, the fleet departed Almaty for its final destination of Tbilisi, Gruziya, some 5,000 km away.

This is the second such Toyota Caravan to take place with the cooperation of the Moscow Adventure Club. Following last year's success, the Caravan's goals are to introduce the convenience of Toyota after-sales service to as many customers as possible. While expanding the service network and directly soliciting customer comments and opinions, it also aims to compile local vehicle use and traffic condition information, in order to develop products that will offer greater satisfaction to customers in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

At a press conference before today's Almaty departure ceremony, TMC Overseas Service Division, General Manager Yasuo Kawaguchi affirmed Toyota's intention to bolster CIS service activities. He cited Toyota's aggressive establishment of 'Toyota Authorized Service Stations (TASS),' which aim to provide full and effective service to CIS customers, stating, "We look forward to the Toyota Caravan as a means of further strengthening ties with the CIS."
The Caravan will visit the main cities of Bishkek, Dzhambul, Tashkent, Samarkand, Buhara, Mary, Ashabad, Nebit-Dag, Turkmenbasi, Baku and Gamdzha, before reaching its final destination of Tbilisi, where an arrival ceremony is scheduled to take place on November 1.