Scale is the holy grail

High-volume global architectures are the new strategic weapons in the war on vehicle development costs.

When Toyota launched the 2006 RAV4, it quietly unveiled much, much more than a new compact crossover utility. Under the RAV4's exterior sheet metal was the company's latest blueprint for vehicle development.

The RAV4 was Toyota's first product built on the all-new global architecture known by the MC internal code. This is the mother of all vehicle platforms-an extremely flexible set of body-structure geometries, hard points, common component sets, and manufacturing processes that is allowing Toyota to leverage huge economies of scale, and boost its profit per unit, across its global manufacturing empire.