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Toyota on American Sniper

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Old 01-26-15, 06:03 AM
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gyrase321
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Default Toyota on American Sniper

While watching American Sniper over the weekend I noticed several Toyota vehicles (I think Land Cruisers) prominently shown in several scenes. Some scenes have the Al Qaeda militants driving them, in others the Navy Seals use them (i.e. the scene where they were ambushed while delivering money in exchange for info about the Butcher).

Great product positioning by Toyota on the movie. On the other hand, I have seen actual news footage of battle zones in Iraq where Toyotas are quite commonplace. A vote for Toyota reliability in some of the world's most demanding and dangerous environments?
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Old 01-26-15, 06:38 AM
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spwolf
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this is common knowledge... Land Cruisers (various versions) and Hilux are best selling vehicles in these countries. ISIS got bunch of new Hilux's and i have seen some people (big 3 lovers?) call for boycott of Toyota because of that :-).

As the war in Afghanistan escalated several years ago, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, a member of the team that designed the Iraq surge for Gen. David Petraeus, began to notice a new tattoo on some insurgent Afghan fighters. It wasn’t a Taliban tattoo. It wasn’t even Afghan. It was a Canadian maple leaf.

When a perplexed Kilcullen began to investigate, he says, he discovered that the incongruous flags were linked to what he says is one of the most important, and unnoticed, weapons of guerrilla war in Afghanistan and across the world: the lightweight, virtually indestructible Toyota Hilux truck.

“In Afghanistan in particular,” he says, “[the trucks are] incredibly well respected.”
So well respected, in fact, that some enterprising fraudsters thought them worthy of ripping off. The imitations, Kilcullen says, had flooded the market, leaving disappointed fighters in their wake. But then “a shipment of high-quality [real] Hiluxes arrived, courtesy of the Canadian government,” he explains. “They had little Canadian flags on the back. Because they were the real deal, and because of how the Hilux is seen, over time, strangely, the Canadian flag has become a symbol of high quality across the country. Hence the tattoos.”
http://www.newsweek.com/why-rebel-gr...ta-hilux-74195

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Old 01-26-15, 08:57 AM
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Gojirra99
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Yep they are very popular there, I saw lots of them during my own visit to the middle east. We had a fleet of Land Cruisers for our tour of the sand dunes ...
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Old 01-26-15, 10:39 AM
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chikoo
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Originally Posted by gyrase321
While watching American Sniper over the weekend I noticed several Toyota vehicles (I think Land Cruisers) prominently shown in several scenes. Some scenes have the Al Qaeda militants driving them, in others the Navy Seals use them (i.e. the scene where they were ambushed while delivering money in exchange for info about the Butcher).

Great product positioning by Toyota on the movie. On the other hand, I have seen actual news footage of battle zones in Iraq where Toyotas are quite commonplace. A vote for Toyota reliability in some of the world's most demanding and dangerous environments?
reinforces my vote for keeping T O YO T A as the logo, and not the spinny things logo that came about as an afterthought.
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