Monday, March 08, 2010

An observation

In Bolivia, there are many re-purposed old cars. Most of these visible re-purposed cars are old Toyotas and Nissans. (There are some really older Buick buses out there, too, but I always forget to take a photo of them.) As such, many of these have logos from their former lives as company cars in Japan. This is itself an interesting thing, since I have seen a few of these that had old Japanese phone numbers still written on their backs. I'm tempted to seek out one or some of these Japanese companies and send them a photo of what their cars look like today.

Another thing was that I saw some Toyotas driving around with "Toyosa" written where "Toyota" should have been. I thought that this was some sort of thing where people don't want to pay for Toyota products, but still have what are Toyotas. However, this was shot down when I saw a Toyota-Toyosa auto dealer. So what is Toyosa? Well, a search of Wikipedia comes up with nothing (in either Enlish or EspaƱol). However, a search of the google comes up with a few webpages, including this one: Toyosa S.A.

Based on the very first line of the page, it seems that Toyosa is the official distributor of Toyota products in Bolivia (Distribudor exclusivo de Toyota para Bolivia), unless I misunderstand the Spanish.

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