It might be easy to assume that the car parts go straight to the bin, but according to Toyota’s Technical Director, Tom Fowler, the reality is not so straightforward. At least, not at Toyota.
“Even if you see us changing the bumpers and spoilers in every service, actually they are not new every time,” Fowler recently revealed in an interview with Rally TV.
Parts are also heavily recycled, and the situation varies significantly between different surfaces. For instance, parts do not wear out in the same way in a tarmac rally as they do in a gruelling gravel competition.
“On a tarmac rally, the car that starts the rally is the same one that finishes it in almost all of the parts because consumption during the event is very low. The wear and tear that needs to be fixed during service is very low,” Fowler explained.
“Quite the opposite comes for a rally like Safari (in Kenya), which is of course in very extreme conditions, so we need to rebuild the car almost every service,” Fowler illustrated.
Even if the car needs to be rebuilt during service, new parts aren’t always used. Recycled material is utilised as much as possible.
“The way that we (rebuild the car) is by rotating the parts. So, before they become completely destroyed, we remove nearly all of the lower body work – front bumper, rear bumper, sills – and we replace those with reworked ones and we take those off the car and those are refabricated and reserviced and put back in the next timer,” Fowler shared.
The ability to recycle parts naturally depends on the driver. Not all parts can be reused.
“As we know, in rally anything can happen and it usually does so. In the case of an accident our mechanics will have a lot more parts to change but, as much as possible, we are reservicing and recycling the parts,” Fowler noted.
