The twin Corollas: RunX and Fielder

What you need to know:

  • Essentially, the RunX and the Allex are the same cars with different names. One was built for sale only within Japan while the other was taken from the line of cars that has become one of the world’s best-selling cars.

If your sight is good enough, you should by now have noticed the similarities between the ninth generation Toyota Corolla (E120) sedan, also known as Fielder in its station wagon guise and twin hatchbacks in Toyota RunX for the Japan, South Africa and Israel markets and Allex for the Japanese domestic market (JDM).
With the hatchbacks, the front seems identical as are the body shapes with only the taillights looking slightly different. Everything else including the dashboard, look similar. The sedan Corolla and wagon Fielder are the same at the front and inside, save for the body shapes. But what makes these cars different?

Why the twins?
This is not the first time that Toyota is making “twin vehicles.” Look at the Voxy and Noah, the AE100 and AE110, the Corona ST190 [Kibina] and Caldina or the Toyota Probox and the Toyota Succeed.
Some models are considered a bit upmarket in Japan and are a target for some consumers while others are considered ordinary albeit with minor differences in style.
Or take it that whereas one version of the twins is for the JDM, the others are for export; this also explains the different sales locations for both versions.

History of the twins
Car enthusiast Sejin Kim, notes that in 1966, Toyota began producing a new line of cars that they named ‘Corolla’.
Alongside the Corolla, Toyota produced a Sprinter exclusively for Japan. The Sprinter, though using the same body design, was originally envisioned as a sportier version of Corolla.
While the Corolla and the Sprinter, to an extent, have been popular throughout, Corolla has gone through a number of redesigns through the years.


Again, this is a fairly common practice in the automobile industry; new technologies and safety implementations will find their way into popular-selling cars to make them more appealing to new buyers.

Often, the look of a car will appear old-fashioned or out-of-date, and the manufacturers will try to make the cars look more modern with a retooling of an existing design. While this is not exactly “rebadging,” it is creating a “new” car from an existing automobile design.
Another common practice in the automobile industry, is platform sharing, in which an existing design is used across a variety of different body types. For instance, it is common for automobile manufacturers to use the same chassis when building a sport utility vehicle (SUV) as they would for a sedan or use the body of a pickup truck when manufacturing a cargo van.

“In the case of Corolla, the same compact car design can also be used to create a hatchback design. A hatchback is a compact car with a door on the rear that swings up, providing access to the cargo area,” Kim explains.
Toyota, when expanding into the hatchback market, took the Corolla design and simply tweaked it in order to provide access to the back storage compartment with an upward-swinging door.
Thus, the Corolla FX hatchback was born. This eventually was rebranded as the Toyota RunX; the Japanese domestic car, the Sprinter, underwent the same alteration and was rebadged as the Toyota Allex.

Essentially, the RunX and the Allex are the same cars with different names. One was built for sale only within Japan while the other was taken from the line of cars that has become one of the world’s best-selling cars.
Bob Mawanda of Blue Ocean Motors, says he knows about twin Toyotas so well but most people distort the market
“For instance the Voxy (twin with Toyota Noah) does not sell well, because some first buyers had problems with the electrical system and then bad-mouthed it,” Mawanda says.
Other buyers, he says, depends on hearsay and speculation.
“... Corollas are very good only that people are yet to know them well. Some 2010 Allex/RunX models with keyless entry could go for as high as Shs35m,” he observes.