How did Toyota become #1?

Just editorial:

I live in fear that some day Toyota will has abandoned their reputation for reliability in favor of cheaper cars that need to be replaced sooner. In this world of quick profits, you never know when that might happen that's happening as we speak.

 

I think you're forgetting about GM - which was #1 for the MOST amount of years. But times change - & so Toyota took over. Times changed again & VW got #1 then was caught cheating - so they lost their crown. China is catching up fast expected to pass Toyota (in less than 5 years). Toyota has refused to make a slew of EVS the way other manufacturers have done - so they have fallen behind - although they keep saying they're going to put out more product. The only reason we bought a plug-in from another manufacturer, was because Toyota took WAY too long to enter the game - with a reasonable amount of miles EV. We tried & tried to get the plug-in RAV4 but refused to be raped $10,000 over MSRP. Now in the market - we would buy a Tacoma plug-in in a heartbeat, but Toyota has been slow even to release a hybrid version. Thus we're stuck buying the Dodge Ramcharger coming out later this year with WELL over 100 miles EV range.

Yes, Toyota cars are generally great. But times are changing. Who knows what the future holds.

 

before toyota became successful, an american named demming went to japan and taught them how to successfully make quality mass manufactured cars.
they've slipped a little over the past decades, probably due to price pressure and wall street, but still make pretty long lasting vehicles in most cases, and unless you frequent places like priuschat, they still have a high quality product in most of the publics mind.

 

My PPPXP is our 5th Toyota (Tercel, Prius Gen1, Sienna, Prius Gen3, and now the Gen5). I fully agree that until the Gen5 they were never exciting, fast, or good looking, but our main criterion is reliability. Each one lasted well beyond expectations if not an accident victim. And during those years was very cheap on maintenance. Hence me being a repeat customer. I had my Gen1 for 20 years and 220K miles with only about $2500 in non-scheduled maintenance that whole time. And I gave it away still working fine.

I, too, fear that maybe they could be slipping. But given their track record so far, giving them the benefit of the doubt. Fingers crossed.

...and it still feels weird having a nice looking and fun car for the first time ever!

Will

 

another boon for toyota were the quality failures of gm, ford and chrysler

 

I'm not a farmer, I don't own a tractor, but I keep reading that John Deere already torched their own reputation & customer goodwill with their draconian licensing and lack of repairability.

Again, I don't have direct history with them but I'm not sure I'd raise them up as an example for others to follow without getting some more clarity on those points.

 

My understanding is that Dr. W. Edwards Deming went around Detroit trying to sell them on the idea of building better cars. Detroit execs were fat and happy and had made a living since forever marketing just two things - power and comfort. They patted him on the head and showed him the door.

I'm not sure how he chose Japan, but his ideas did match up well with the Japanese culture of perfection even in small things. The Japanese went all in on economy and reliability and as we found out, Americans like those things too.

So, part of how they became number one is that the competition in Detroit was sound asleep at the wheel...

 

Ahh, history. Japan's ascendency was largely the result of the Red Scare or fear of Communism spreading worldwide that was pervasive in the West particularly in the US immediately after WWII. After Stalin reclaimed East Berlin the Allies agreed that communism wouldn't be allowed to take root in the devastated economies and demoralized populations of Japan and Germany. General Marshal went to Europe and General Douglas McArthur and the Allied powers led by the US all but rebuilt the Japanese manufacturing and distribution sectors of the Japanese economy between 1945 and 1952. Deming made his first trip to Japan in 1950. Bombed literally back to the Stone Age, new manufacturing plants staffed with management eager to adopt new manufacturing techniques were ripe to embrace Deming's quality process. Detroit was fat on old ways of building vehicles that was largely unchanged from Henry Ford's assembly lines. It didn't happen overnight. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s Americans viewed Japanese goods as cheap copies manufactured to crude standards. Much of it actually was but quality and innovation improved year by year while behind the scenes visionaries like Sochirio Honda and Sakichi Toyoda and his son dreamed very big dreams. Parallels to the ascendancy of Korean automakers in the 2000s (who bought cheap crappy Hyundais in 1986? People that couldn't afford a Honda) are unmistakable and now the parallel to Chinese automakers repeat history. Detroit will hide behind politicians that champion trade wars and tariffs to keep high quality Chinese cars out of the US instead of pouring money into new technologies in order to compete with innovative vehicles.

 

i agree to a point, but china is not our friend, and they don't hesitate to flood markets with government subsidized goods to get a foot in the door.
when we're on a level playing field, the tariffs will go away.
the last thing we need is to become more dependent than we already are on hostile countries.

 

FWIW, I rely on Consumer Reports for most of my durable goods choices. Within their reports, quality and reliability are what I pay the most attention to and hence a Toyota buyer. I do find it interesting that the Toyota doesn't do well on overall customer satisfaction though, so evidence that folk can still be very satisfied with a fun but unreliable car, but not me. Boring and reliable is just fine, hence Prii for 20+ years. Now, with a Gen5, still hoping on reliable, but certainly a lot less boring!

will

 

Most of the complaints are usually infotainment related, which is one thing I don’t like about cr.

 

@bisco : Yea, I do look at individual scores, not just the overall score as there are things they care about I don't. But overall I am very much a fan of the magazine.

will

 

This is an unusual thread when most consumers are crying that cars have become too bloated and expensive. The western auto industry has become incredibly complex with so many moving pieces in the whole supply chain, all automakers will have slip ups but much of that is due to supplier errors...but the fault lies in consumers/government, we want our cars to be supercomputers on wheels..

They have sold cheap kei cars in japan which have been far under $10,000 for many decades now and you're worried about them selling "cheap" cars in America? Isn't cheap what America desperately needs when the only cheap car you can get is a Mitsubishi mirage which is probably close to $20 k after taxes.. Perhaps many of us should move to Japan, they have it right, they allow grey imports of any model year, their government doesn't require same standards so many cars are still sold without headunits or backup cameras and thus they have much better cheaper car selection than us.

either way, we have had so many toyotas new and old, new ones are still fine. I am running a 1.6 L 3 cyl with 300 horsepower, what are you driving that is very concerning of this idea of toyota losing their edge? Last year, Toyota told Americans their prices will possibly be going up in order to maintain their position so I guess that is the solution at least for the west, if you want all the tech and "reliability/durability" then you're going to pay for it.

 

Off topic but if we're gonna discuss rebuilding of Japan post WW2, and with American "treaties" I wouldn't exactly frame the issue in the most positive light. The US took significant advantage of Japan after they were the ones that bombed much of the country to hell and back. Not just with nuclear bombs, but they firebombed and burned a significant portion of Tokyo and the surrounding area to the ground.

But, setting aside the exploitation of Japan in the 50s and 60s, the general throughline that there's a perception of low quality output coming from eastern countries while they build manufacturing expertise is not wrong. I'm still not a fan of the Korean automakers, but they're significantly better than they were in the past. And I'm sure Chinese automakers are making leaps and bounds as well.

The real issue with Chinese automakers and the calls for tariffs is related to the disproportionate level of subsidy they receive, and whether we like it or not, if they're ahead of tech and manufacturing in terms of volume and cost in the short term, they could choke out competition of domestic automakers and that's bad for domestic economies in places like Canada, US, Mexico, Germany in particular. So it makes sense that these countries would consider tariffs to buy some time to catch up or at least find efficiencies. The tariffs are, at the end of the day, tools to counter the level of subsidy provided by other countries. If the US subsidizes, idk, 15% of the car industry and china does 30 (made up numbers of course), then a tariff that brings it closer to the equivalent of the US 15% makes sense.

 

I don't think that's accurate. It fails to take the USA dealer model into account.

Toyota and other automakers build what the dealers order from them. Not what the end-user-customer wants. It's a distorted market.

Dealers mostly care about originating new loans, and the bigger the better.

So they order the sorts of inventory that will help them talk people into signing big loans. "Sure, you're going to stretch to make this payment every month for the next 84 months... So enjoy yourself! Look at everything you get for it!" is the modern pitch.

Dealers have been misrepresenting consumer demand for a long time, and it is only getting worse.

 

It is a factor but it isn’t it either. Americans think new cheap cars are penalty boxes, "toys" or unsafe. It is a consumer problem, if they don't buy, the cars will sit on the lots and at some point something will give but consumers are clamoring for f150s with mortgage payments instead of mirages. So many Asian countries sell both expensive and dirt cheap new cars, Europe still has this to some degree but that ship has virtually sailed in america..

Still, bit deviating from OP's topic, don't see toyota worsening in America, more complicated and thus more failure points yes which is industry norm, they are just going to become more expensive..

 

Rock bottom interest rates for almost 15 years gonna do that to you, that's for sure. Everything is affordable when you can make the payments and have the cash flow to support 84 months of payments at 2% interest after all. What's another 20$ a month to get all the bells and whistles?

 

I'm not a farmer, but I do own a tractor, albeit a subcompact. Definitely not John Deere. Kubota. Reliable, well designed, well built, and they stand behind their product with their own supply of quality parts.

I have a John Deere rider mower left behind by a prior owner. It's less than 8 years old, but the trans will not go up any kind of hill after it is warmed up. Deere knows it's a design problem but won't address it, and replacing the trans with a properly designed one will cost more than a new mower. (Thus, the tractor!)