AD 84529

From 1992! Wow, that's pretty old. It was retired in december 2018 from the last registration of BX50373.

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It's an Hiace?, I'm not too much into old Toyota models that weren't sold in Spain
A shame they retired it, it looked good

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Yes, Hiace. They were common ambulances in Hungary in the 90s

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This is shocking. Are you saying that Hiace wasn't sold in Spain back then? I thought they were hugely popular all over western Europe.

Up here we had Hiace, Ford Transit and VW Transporter as the major players with Mercedes T1/Sprinter, Fiat Ducato, Iveco Daily in leading support roles. French vans were only small players back then. I think that's all we had, except for a solitary Chevy Astro, Mitsubishi and Nissan now and then.

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Toyota in Spain wasn't so present until mid-90s, and sales didn't go so much up until last years with Hybrid cars. It all cames from the reason that until the 80s imported cars were so limited and taxed (except Canary Island were Toyota had ever a big presence sinbce the 70s), so for example probably the Hiace was officially sold but in some little units or not sold, I think until the Carina-E very few toyotas could be seen on the road.

In Portugal for example the Hiace was a best-seller since the 70s-80s and you could see loads of them

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The HiAce is not a popular car at all in most of Europe, surprisingly enough. That's why they were discontinued, if I remember correctly the only countries where Toyota made a profit by selling them was in Norway, Finland and Ireland the last years, and that's why they stopped selling them here. Which was bad news for basically everyone that wanted a van in Norway, I think it was the best selling van for almost 40 years. And even to this day I see more Hiaces than Transporters.

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Interesting that the other Japanese vans were not so popular, I guess they were the cheapest options. Hungary is one of the countries where the Hiace lost popularity after the 90s, but that time, Mitsubishi L300 and Mazda E-Series were also common, and the Spanish-made Nissan Vanette Cargo became a bestseller when it debuted (I think this also had some tax reasons). Even the Kia Besta/Pregio sold decently.

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I find these old vans interesting . Here in Norway the Hiace was the king of the vans, but other than that Japanese/Korean vans were not very popular. I see sometimes L300's and L400's and Hyundai H1's, but they are rare compared to the Hiace. I have seen the Vanette, both Spanish and Japanese version a few times but I would say that they are rare cars here, but never seen the E-Series or Besta. Althought I looked up, and apparently there are some 150 E2000's and 60 Bestas on the roads today, so they were at least sold here.

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I agree that it's an interesting subject, especially the big differences in popularity of models and makes, often for no obvious reason.

Naturally, if a country produces vehicles, these will be popular in that area. In northern countries, the climate may play a role as well, so if a brand gets a reputation of being particularily prone to rust, it could/would affect the sales in nordic countries.

But in cases such as the Hiace, there are no obvious reasons for suddenly losing popularity.

Antenn, you say that the Hiace lost popularity in Hungary after the 1990s. Do you happen to know, which models buyers started getting instead of the Hiace?

Because I enter all my spots into a database, I can see, that in Denmark, french vans started taking over, once the Hiace was retired and replaced by the Proace in 2012/13. Once faithful Toyota buyers switched to Renault Master, Renault Trafic, Peugeot Boxer and Citroën Jumper (and also Opel Vivaro), but this was - as I said - much later.

The Hyundai H-1 never had big sales here, but I've noticed, that they tend to last long, so customers must be relatively satisfied.

Besta, I've never seen and the only E-Series I've recorded (and uploaded) was exported, which is probably no coincidence.

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The Trafic/Vivaro were successful once they started production in 2001, so they definitely took customers away from Toyota. Transporter/Caddy, Transit, Vito/Sprinter and the PSA-Fiat vans probably gained popularity, but they were already common.
As for the Ambulance Service, they went to larger models, Sprinters and Transits. I think most other Hiaces were in private use. Our old neighbor also owned one, don't know if he ever replaced it (he was elderly), but it's not in traffic anymore.

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This spot (AD 84529) is definitely Danish Toyota HiAce is honestly spoken legendary in Norwegian traffic. When the import was stopped many HiAce owners bought one or two extra of them to have spare parts when that could be necessary

KIA Besta was extremely rare here, but I spotted one in Larvik many years ago:
https://platesmania.com/no/nomer18217327
I must admit I didn't spot it because it was an extremely rare van from South Korea, but because of the funny text in the rear window...

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