Living close to a metropolitan area, each evening on TV, I may see literally dozens of Toyota ads from several dealers - NEVER mentioning a Prius - though they boast, "6 models which get more than 30 mpg!" My wife said that she'd never heard of a Prius until about a year ago when I started investigating my next auto purchase. What gives?
There's only 150,000 available. Advertising would cause a shortage. Next year, Panasonic will have greater production capacity. That means more battery-packs for Toyota. .
It implies that they are already selling them as fast as they can make them. Why spend money to build up demand for cars you don't have?
The Prius and Rav4 are the fastest turning vehicles in Toyota's lineup. I think the average lot time for each one is around 6 days. They don't need to incentivise them or advertise them. Do you remember the last ad you saw for the prius, or rav4? I don't either. People are always kinda irritated that Toyota doesn't offer special financing, or rebates on either model when they come in for a test drive.
Ironically I saw my first one tonight. It was actually pretty funny, but I can't find it online. The premise was they were going to listen to a "learn swedish" CD until they had to get gas. At that point the kids could listen to their own music. By the time they stopped they were fluent in Swedish.
I saw the same ad as mikem13 and agree it was good. I saw it once about a month ago and have not seen it again. It has the default Toyota family that is in the other ads. I seems that Toyota doesn't need to advertise the Prius to sell it. I don't even see dealers advertising them in the paper either.
Yeah, A guy at work wanted to buy a Camry, He asked for incentive information and or rebates and they said NONE. He went down to the Chevy dealer and asked for incentives, rebates, and he drove a new Impala home.
The "incentives" and "rebates" on Toyota's are built into the car: outstanding long-term reliability and low cost of ownership. :first: Won't get that with an Impala (check the April issue of Consumer Reports).
Toyota seems to take a different business model to the Prius. Build it great, after a ton of R & D then let its satisfied customers sell it. It does seem to sell itself. Makes sense ... that's why you see a ton of Hummer ads, because they can't unload 'em. Toyota has learned, it seems, that if you build a better mousetrap, people will beat a path to your door to get it. 'Other' companies, spend the R & D dollars on ads, then the product just sits on the lot until cobwebs form.
I sometimes see commercials for the Prius here in northern Virginia. In fact, I went out and bought mine in late April last year after seeing that they were offering deals that would expire at the end of the month. I also see ads for the Camry, and sometimes they offer deals, but the ones I remember seeing are lease deals.
Couldn't agree more. I've only ever had 4 new cars in my life and 3 of those were (1 will be) Toyotas. The 1st was a Ford (ok, so we all get suckered once with the low price, extras and lots of glam ads) which was a heap of junk; it had an engine overrun when turned off and the guy at the dealership just said yeah, they all do that - funny it was never in the ads. So anyway, having grown up and vowing never to be suckered again, the next 3 were Toyotas, a Cressida in the early 90's (poor fuel consumption, but beautiful ride), a Camry in the mid 90s (great fuel consumption, equally good ride and looked the dogs dooh dahs at the time). Now flash forward 10 years and the next is a Prius, due in about a week now, From everything I've read and from test drives, I just know this is not going to disappoint me ever and will be just the same as the previous Toyotas I extoll the virtues of; bullet-proof reliability, comfortable, great value for money and the knowledge you havent wasted your money buying one new. I just love Toyotas, even when they weren't fashionable and I havent lost that love today, they're still brilliant - so who needs ads to be told they're the best bang for the buck any car owner will ever invest in, particularly the Prius ??
Here in the San Francisco bay area there are Prius TV commercials every night on the major network channels. The local Toyota dealers have plenty in stock. Keith
As far as rebates go I once was told from a Toyota dealer. "Toyota doesn't like to do rebates as they already price their cars competitively, The other guys do the incentives because they have a poor business model and can't sell their vehicles without them" Now granted that is coming from a dealer, I still believe its at least half true because if you go to Toyotas website they have alot of "good" incentives if you want a Tacoma or Tundra. If fact now that you mention it the only Toyota commercials I think I see are for the Tundra and Tacoma, go figure.
