In the early 2000s, Qualis was something which is Innova is today. Toyota launched their first car in India in 2000, but a lot of Indians had experienced this brand before because most people who had traveled abroad had obviously traveled in or experienced the Toyota and there were a lot of privately imported Toyotas as well. Now Toyota always had a very good lineup globally, so one would naturally expect Toyota to enter the Indian market with some of the more exciting products, but Toyota thought other ways. They entered India with the Qualis, an MVP that rivaled the Tata Sumo and Mahindra Bolero. The Mahindra Bolero and Tata Sumo were very popular back in the day, in fact, the Bolero is popular even today. The Toyota Qualis was more refined, more comfortable, and it created a connection with the private car buyer which paved the way for the success story of Toyota in India. Toyota launched the big ad campaign in 1999 before entering India, and the tagline was "Touch and Try". Basically, this was aimed at people who have never experience a Toyota before, and the automaker was happily welcoming people to come to their showroom and check out the Qualis. The Qualis was first showcased in India in the 2000 AutoExpo and not only the regular one, but another variant called the Toyota Qualis Surf was also showcased there, but nobody knows what happened. Toyota entered the Indian market in a joint venture with the Kirloskar Group and the first model of the Qualis was entirely an all-new model, in fact, the Qualis was sold as the 3rd generation Kijang in other countries like Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. When it was announced that the Toyota Qualis will be launched in India, people forecasted it to be a big failure because no one wanted to buy an old outdated MVP, but the Toyota Qualis proved every forecast wrong, and it became a hot-selling MVP in the Indian market.
The Toyota Qualis arrived in January 2000 and it was priced from Rs 5.70 - 8 Lakhs (on-road), and it was available in 3 variants which are Qualis FS which means family saloon, Qualis GS which means grand saloon, and Qualis GS-T which means grand saloon-touring. There were some cosmetics and equipment differentiation between the 3 variants. By the way, Qualis was the short form of Quality and Service. The FS - Family Saloon variant was the base variant and it did not really have any features as such, but it became very popular with cabbies and fleet operators. It was offered in a 3 + 3 + 4 layout basically it was a 10 seater with bench seats on the front row and side-facing seats for the last row. The FS variant of the Qualis was further offered in five trims, B1, B2, B3, B4, and B5 and the base trim did not have AC, Power steering, and Power windows. In fact, the FS trim did not get metallic colors or body stickers as well, and it was offered with only 3 solid colors which are white, blue, and maroon. The GS - Grand Saloon variant was offered with 8 - seater layouts and 10-seater layouts. The 10-seater layout was similar to the FS variant but the 8-seater layout had bucket seats at the front and front-facing 3rd-row seats. The GS variant of the Toyota Qualis came with Body cladding, Aluminium footboard, and some metallic colors like silver, maroon, and teal, and it got some features like power steering and AC, Central locking, and power windows were optional. The top-end variant of the Toyota Qualis which is the GS-T variant or the Grand Saloon - Touring variant had everything, it had AC, power steering, power windows, chequered decals, bull bar with fog lamps, central locking, dual AC, rear spoiler, and even a rear wiper. After this, Toyota introduced a special edition variant of the Qualis based on the FS variant only, and it was offered only with the silver body color and blue and white body decals. The Toyota Qualis was the runaway success in India and the success hit Toyota so hard they actually tried introducing a Petrol variant of the Qualis to compete in the premium car segment but the price of the car and the low fuel efficiency ensured that the Petrol Qualis was dead on arrival.
The Toyota Qualis was offered a 2.4-liter diesel engine making 75 Horsepower and 160 NM Torque, and this wasn't a turbo-charged diesel engine but a naturally aspirated one. The petrol engine was a 2.0-liter unit. The Toyota Qualis did not get an automatic variant, it only got a 5-speed manual. The Qualis came with 175/14-inch tires. With the introduction of the Chevrolet Tavera and Mahindra Scorpio, Toyota knew that they had to do something with the aging Qualis. Now the Kijang got a major facelift in other Southeast Asian countries, and that was expected to be launched in India but Toyota launched just a minor facelifted version of the existing Qualis. The Qualis facelift got the same interior, same engine, and same body as the existing Qualis, but it did come with a new chrome grille, new bumpers, multi-reflector headlamps, and reflectors which are mounted on the tailgate. Along with these, the Qualis facelift got wider tires. The petrol version of the Qualis was a royal flop and the variant was called RS - Royal Saloon. Toyota also went on launching a couple of limited edition variants of the Qualis and the best one was the Toyota Qualis Myst. Now, this was based on the FS variant, it got the metallic black color, wheel caps from the GS variant along with that it also got side body cladding, cup holders, and body stickering. The Toyota Qualis looked weird from certain angles, it was not very modern either, but somehow it just connected with the people of India and sales were through the roofs. In fact, the Toyota Qualis was on sale in India for 61 Months, and Toyota sold more than 1.4 Lakh units of the Qualis which was indeed a great number back that day. When Toyota was discontinuing the Qualis, the sales were really high and people were actually questioning Toyota's decision to discontinuing this car. The Toyota Qualis sold an average of 2300 units a month and when it was discontinued, sales were at their all-time high. In fact, people who bought the Qualis, swore by its reliability and ease of use, this same thing is true even today with the customers of the Innova and the Fortuner.
In 2005, Toyota Qualis was replaced by Innova. The Innova was modern, safer, and more comfortable and then the rest is history.
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