The Aurion is Toyota's most serious assault so far on the large car market.

It joins Ford Falcon, Holden VE Commodore and Mitsubishi 380 on the list of passenger vehicles available with an LPG Autogas option.

The state-of-the-art Aurion conversion kit was co-developed by Victorian-based companies Apollo Gas Products and Lpgas1.

Private and business motorist interest in converting vehicles to run on LPG Autogas has skyrocketed since the introduction of the Federal Government's LPG Vehicle Scheme, which provides a rebate up to $2000 against conversion costs.

Peak industry body LPG Australia says volatile fuel prices and escalating concerns about greenhouse gas emissions have thrown a spotlight on the advantages of running LPG Autogas in vehicles.

"LPG Autogas produces extremely low particulate emissions during combustion, insignificant levels of sulphur dioxide emissions and one of the lowest life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of all commercially available automotive fuels," said LPG Australia Industry Development Manager Phil Westlake.

According to LPG Australia, Autogas also dramatically reduces the build-up of carbon on internal engine components, reducing engine wear and enhancing reliability.

Manufactured in Italy by Landi Renzo, the Aurion Omegas kit offers the latest in sequential gas injection technology, according to Lpgas1 Director Brett Coventry.

Lpgas1 produces the kit's specialised bracketing, wiring and programming.

"The kit uses the Toyota electronic control unit (ECU) which means all the Toyota features are also optimised on LPG," said Mr Coventry.

"It starts on petrol and automatically moves over to gas. If you run out of gas it moves back to petrol again – you'd never know the difference, though, because the system offers no power loss."

Mr Coventry said the system produced a five per cent power improvement over conventional air valve and venturi LPG systems and a 50 per cent reduction in operating costs compared with petrol.

A Manchester-brand LPG tank with an estimated capacity of 53 useable litres is installed in the Aurion's boot.

The Omegas Aurion kit costs $4400 including GST and has successfully passed Australian Standard compliance testing, meeting the stringent Euro IV emission requirements that will not be legislated until 2008.

"The kit is miles ahead of its time in terms of emission compliance," said Mr Coventry.

The Omegas Aurion kit is covered by a three-year, 100,000km warranty from Lpgas1, which will guarantee that the vehicle owner will not face any out-of-pocket insurance costs in the event of kit-related failure, according to Mr Coventry.

Apollo Gas Products has a long history of developing LPG conversion kits for Toyota vehicles, including a factory-approved HiAce kit.

"We were naturally interested in the Aurion kit project because our homework has indicated there is a healthy demand for it," said Apollo Gas Products Technical Manager Maurice Kouvaras.

According to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ national sales figures to February, 2942 Toyota Aurions were sold in 2007.

"Our Omegas kit suits the vehicle perfectly and we've been getting some phenomenal results from it," continued Mr Kouvaras.