Newsweek: Toyota Truimphs

awesome article jeff, headed to the store to get a paper copy of Newsweek right now

 

Thats amazing... I think it would be a good idea to start investing in some Toyota stock about now.

 

Thanks for sharing that article; it was very well written, I was very impressed.

Now that GM and Ford know that Toyota can destroy them, maybe they will be motivated to provide genuine clean, safe, and reliable automotive transportation.

"What's good for Toyota is good for America"...that has a nice ring!
Flyingprius

 

i am not amazed that GM has admited they are fighting an uphill battle with Toyota. somethings are just too obvious to refute.

more than double the profits of the big 3 combined... leading passenger and hybrid in the US... come on now. that is the LEAST GM can admit too. there are many other truths they fail to recognize.

 

No one mentioned the effects of the UAW. I have a good friend who moved to Michigan after his WWII battelfield service. He swears that in union meetings that the STATED objective was to put the company out of business. And eventually they got that job done and he had to find a new employer after the one he was with closed.

The UAW legends about cars that are Monday lemons are all too true. I really don't know of any new Japanese or German car companies that have built factories in the "blue state" areas that the UAW is strong in. Mostly these plants are built in "Right to Work" states. What happens is that the union anti-company rants posion the workers towards an employer that gives them the best paying job they will ever have. So they show up on Monday half drunk or hungover and can't be fired for poor work.

Mercedes moved into Alabama,
BMW South Carolina.

The Camry is built in Kentucky.

http://www.toyota.com/about/operations/man...ation/tmmc.html

There are no Toyota manufacturing plants in "blue state" areas where unions are strong except in California. All the new Toyota plant investment has been in other areas.

Frankly, for me it is a plus that my Prius was made in Japan.

I have never owned a G.M. that wasn't a lemon, and I have bought two brand new ones in my life. The fifth time I brought that new 1997 Chevy into the dealership for its inablity to start the tech said "hey, you know it is a G.M.!" Well, it was the truth, they know they build junk.

In fact, they apologized for building junk...

http://www.business-in-asia.com/fusion_branding.html

6900 Google hits on "general motors apolgizes for building junk"

EDIT: I note that the article states that Toyota has kept the UAW out of its manufacturing plants EXCEPT in its joint G.M. deal in Fremont. Yeah, I bet they learned a lot. They learned to keep the UAW out.

 

As for GM making junk, are you suggesting that the UAW is responsible for that? Let me give you an example of a chronic design problem in GM cars.
... Open the door or the hood and look at how the door or hood is attached to the body. You will notice that in most GM and Ford and Chrysler cars, you will see that the door or hood can be attached in such a way to be moveable up or down or back and forth. So to get the door to fit just right, you need to use "shims". ... Then go open the door or hood of a Toyota. You will see that there is only one way to bolt a door on. "Shims" are not needed at all. Simply bolt it on and it fits perfectly. You see, quality is built in from the design all the way to the end of the line. In American cars, precision and quality requires adjustment all along the line.

I use the doors as an example but I think it's a telling one. The kind of thinking that gives us the doors and hoods that bolt on like they do is repeated throughout the car.

So I suspect that the reason for "junk" made by GM is more a design problem than a manufacturing one. In 1978, GM cars were known to start rusting in the showroom and the typical life of an American car was about 3 years. Today it's closer to 7 or 8 and the fit and finish is better all around. Yet the UAW was there all along. What changed? My answer to that is that GM changed, not the UAW.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that the UAW is perfect, just that management is more than likely the bigger culprit in the junk that can come out of GM, both back then and now.

 

the quality comes from the fact that the word "tolerance" or the amount of sloppiness allowed when creating a product is not recognized in the Japanese languge. you can thank Mr Demmings for teaching the Japanese on how to do it the right way the first time.

Mr Demmings is also the only non Japanese (he is american... so it proves that we do know how to do it right...) to earn Japan's highest civil award. In Japan, his status is god-like in stature. Only the emperor has more respect... and that point is debateable by many

 

i looked for the mag in paper and couldnt find it but did come across a US News and World Reports article about the Prius...

i later found it on line at

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/artic...509/9hybrid.htm

while you are at it you should read the side stories especially the one about GM's hydro car...

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/artic...9/9hybrid.b.htm

an interesting ??fact??

GM's fuel-cell prototype, the Sequel, is just beginning to hit modest benchmarks for performance and convenience. It can travel 300 miles between refuelings, typical for a passenger car, and accelerates from 0 to 60 in less than 10 seconds--at least 50 percent faster than a Prius.

 

the hydrogen car doesnt use a battery in the regular sense and according to the article, it has way less parts than a Prius or regular car. the problem lies in the fact that it must use a very rare earth element (platinum) and the fact that it will cost at least 15 TRILLION dollars to get a bare bones fueling infrastructure in place.

also the expense is huge right now...people talk about the $4000 premium for a hybrid... well how about a $50,000 premium for an H car??

and that technology also needs a breakthrough also. now we have GM saying the technology will be ready in 2010 and Toyota saying it earliest we can hope for is 2025... who do you believe???

 

Do you have any idea how vindicating this is for me? (So much for being humble.)

After years of sharing that uphill battle, the team I chose to play offense for is not only winning... it is utterly crushing the competition to the point of redefining what the new arena will be.

Getting to watch the "best case scenario" actually become a reality is absolutely incredible.

Sweet!

 

As a very minor Toyota stockholder, I am pleased with all that is happening. I predict that within the next year we will see the end of the Pontiac and Buick lines at GM and a complete change in GM's leadership. I hope that they do not fall into bankruptcy because of the horrific implications that could have for the entire US economy, and I do not think that the government will bail them out, as they do not have the resource with all the Bush wars expenses.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"86822)</div>

The brand new Ford's I have bought, made in Kentucky or Canadian plants, have been vastly better than the G.M. products I have bought. Chrysler products were long noted for being all around good except for poor body integrity. The Caravan/Voyager's of 20-10 years ago all got the same set of rattles in the same places within 25,000 miles.

I have another grip about the UAW: they let the auto companies make pension and other retirement promises that are UNFUNDED.

So, what that means is that G.M. will do a "Donald Trump" and declare bankruptcy as a business move and get some federal judge to lop off the pension/medial benefits to retired UAW workers and dump the obligation onto the US taxpayers. Over 3,000 company pension schemes have gone bankrupt and the US taxpayer is paying the bill to keep those unfunded pension plan checks coming.

USA today on fed judge ending airline pension plan payments:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/20...htm?POE=MONISVA

(further note about Donald Trump, he has absolutely no morals about who he screws when he does one of his periodic bankruptcy filings. When he does these manuvers, he has to end up putting some of his mom and pop suppliers out of business. why anyone would put up with the indignity of being on that reality show to work for him is beyond me, since he screws everyone around him eventually, including his marriage vows)

69,000 Google hits on "trump files bankruptcy", first hit is someone wailing about shareholders being wiped out.

Good rundown on poor performance of Dispicable Donald:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/ma...-11-trump_x.htm

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Robert Taylor\";p=\"87170)</div>

I'm not sure what point you are making here. I do hope you are not trying to infer that the Ford plants in Kentucky or Canada make better products because they are in "right to work" states that don't have the UAW. ALL Ford plants and Chrysler plants are UAW, whether they are in Canada, Detroit or Kentucky. So if you like Ford products from Kentucky, you can thank BOTH the UAW and Ford managers.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Robert Taylor\";p=\"87170)</div>

The UAW is a Union of WORKERS, not managers. If there is a problem with how GM decides to pay for things, you can hardly blame the Union.

 

cmon now... Toyota proved we have the ability to build a quality product... who do you think works for them?? a bunch of japanese imports??

no... its regular auto workers. most of who probably worked for GM, Ford or whoever.

so its the management problem GM has... i be willing to bet the engineers for GM b*** about the management waay more than we do because they know first hand how many great ideas they come up with that are shot down by the higher ups.