Dan Mihalascu is an accomplished automotive journalist with over two decades of automotive media work both internationally and in his home country of Romania.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, and he has reviewed (sometimes even raced) cars for most of his professional life.
Prior to joining HotCars.com in July 2025, Dan worked as a news writer and editor for InsideEVs.com, CarScoops.com and Autoevolution.com. He also has bylines at DriveMag.com and ConsumerAffairs.com, among other international media outlets.
In Romania, he wrote for car magazines, sports newspapers and even a TV news station.
Writing and cars aside, he loves reading, cycling, hiking and spending quality time with his family.
Toyota has been making the most of its platforms in recent years, extending the shelf life of some of them instead of investing money in new ones. Some people may see that as development cost-cutting at the expense of consumers, depriving them of new tech and features, but Toyota says buyers are actually benefiting from this shift in strategy.
Some of its most popular models, such as the ninth-generation Camry sedan and the upcoming sixth-generation RAV4 SUV share the same platforms with their predecessors under the redesigned bodywork.
Even the next-generation Toyota Hilux mid-size pickup truck, which has utilized the ladder-frame IMV platform for almost two decades, is also expected to carry on with the same architecture.
The automaker is adamant that reusing platforms does not mean that it is stagnating. Toyota Australia Sales and Marketing boss Sean Hanley told Drive (via CarBuzz) that if an existing platform can still be competitive, the company won’t make a change for change’s sake.
“Platforms will move, but there’s no need to move at this point – at all. I mean these platforms are working very well for us, we can achieve all the things we need to achieve globally with the platforms we’ve got.”
Toyota Australia Sales and Marketing boss Sean Hanley
Using the same platform does not mean that the new cars won’t feature visible improvements over their predecessors, according to Hanley. The executive noted that new-generation Toyota models feature improved noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), suspension compliance and powertrain calibration.
Hanley’s statements make sense because, at the end of the day, consumers do not really care if the cars they drive are based on a new or older platform. All they care about is that the product is better than before; how automakers achieve that is their business.
As you can imagine, extending the lifespan of a platform results in significant savings for Toyota, which is great for the company’s bottom line. But there’s something else that customers also benefit from when automakers recycle a tried-and-tested platform: reliability. Hanley said that Toyota is “very much focused on quality, durability, reliability,” and the current platforms offer that.
Of course, as technology evolves and automakers find more efficient ways to build new platforms, vehicle architectures will evolve, Hanley added. Toyota’s approach sounds like a mature and wise one, as reliability is a key metric for car shoppers in a market where vehicles are becoming increasingly complex and therefore more prone to failing in some areas.
Still, one can’t help but wonder whether sticking with an older platform for too long might lead to an automaker missing the boat on new technologies. Toyota doesn’t seem to be concerned about that, though, or at least it doesn’t show it.
Still, if the future of cars is indeed all-electric, saving money on developing new internal combustion engine platforms makes sense. Unlike other automakers, Toyota didn’t go all in on electric vehicles, and that was a good call. Maybe the Japanese automaker is keeping all options open, which is the right thing to do in a fast-changing and volatile market environment. In doing so, until a clear winner emerges in the battle between ICE (including hybrids) and all-electric, Toyota avoids spending too much money on platforms that might not be relevant a decade from now.
What do you think, is Toyota doing the right thing by recycling its older platforms, or is this strategy going to backfire in the long run? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Drive via CarBuzz
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