Toyota May Surpass GM in 2007 With Record Car Sales

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(VaPrius @ Dec 22 2006, 05:45 AM) [snapback]365595[/snapback]</div>

About time. I stopped buying American almost a decade ago as the quality diminished and the arrogance increased. I consider GM what WalMart would look like if it were unionized - I go out of my way to not buy or use anything connected with any union.

Unfortunately it will take further pain to make the unions wake up - GM will have to continue to free fall along with Ford and Chrysler (at least MB will bankroll this portion of it) until they wake up and realize that their wage and benefits are not correctly structured - they are similar to that $1,000 toilet seat the military used to buy - overpriced with a skewed ROI.

So, with FOUR Toyota's currently in my driveway ('02 Lexus LS430, '04 Sienna, '06 Prius and a 3 week old '07 RAV4) and a fifth one coming sometime within the next 18 months (either the '08 Supra or the '08 Lexus LFA 2 door) to replace my last German car ('00 Audi A6) I am doing my best to propel Toyota forward and staying away from all cars American.

Go Toyota! Goodbye GM... I have been looking forward to this day for a while now.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Dec 22 2006, 05:50 AM) [snapback]365598[/snapback]</div>

Do you enjoy the seeing the lost 18,000 American jobs lost with every point of market share Toyota gains? Do you think it is good for you, your family, your neighborhood, your local schools, local governments to keep losing jobs overseas? Do you understand what the true ramifications for all of the above will be in the future? Did it feel good to you sending the $100,000 plus overseas? Does it feel good to be destroying the quality of life those union auto jobs helped create? Bye-bye middle class America.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(VaPrius @ Dec 22 2006, 04:45 AM) [snapback]365595[/snapback]</div>

It is mind-boggling to me the way Toyota owns the American press. The headline above, do you think that came right off a Toyota press-release or do you think the Bloomberg reporter came up with that on his/her own? Pathetic. The reporter would not have to dig very long to find out that much of Toyota's growth over the last 5-10 years has had very little to do with selling fuel-efficient cars and much more to do with selling big cars, luxury cars and trucks.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Dec 22 2006, 11:51 AM) [snapback]365670[/snapback]</div>

Did you feel sorry for the janitors that died when Luke blew up the death star?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(VaPrius @ Dec 22 2006, 04:45 AM) [snapback]365595[/snapback]</div>

If General Motors or Ford builds a better hybrid than the Prius, I will buy it. I don't have an anti-GM or anti-Toyota attitude. If Toyota quality continues to slip as I have read with many models, I may go back to GM or try Honda or even Volkswagen. I wish Toyota well. GM has gone on the record as saying they would rather be a strong #2 than a weak #1. I commend them for that. GM's lower end models are built in Korea. Many of Toyota's models sold here (alas not the Prius) are built in the good old USA. Many foreign companies even have design centers in the US. Unfortunately the profits go overseas, but there's nothing truly American sourced, assembled and sold completely in the USA anymore.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(allargon @ Dec 26 2006, 09:22 PM) [snapback]366986[/snapback]</div>

You made two important points:

1. The profits go overseas. Not circulated and multiplied throughout the American economy.

2. I know the perception that nothing is truly American is continually dropped through various press releases, but it is not true. I recently mystery shopped a Toyota store and was appalled at the mis-information I received form the salesperson. If this one experience is indicative of all Toyota dealers it is a propoganda campaign from the top. Remember every point of market GM or Ford lose to toyota costs roughly 18,000 American jobs. You can't argue with that. those are real jobs being lost by real Americans, great jobs with great benefits.

 

Malorn,

Let me first say that despite owning a Prius for the high mileage uses in our family, I also own two "American" brand trucks for work/business. While the most models of my particular two American trucks are actually built and assembled in Mexico, I specifically sought out, waited for, and ended up paying more for (due to the dealer that had them) the rare versions to these trucks that were actually assembled in the United States... specfically Kentucky and Texas.

Having put a substantial amount of money where my mouth is, I'd like to address your sympathetic points with some realism:


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Dec 27 2006, 04:50 PM) [snapback]367445[/snapback]</div>

To inject some reality into the profits overseas argument, visit the Detroit News, and read how General Motors is pinning their turn around and economic future on expanding the automotive market and manufacturing in China, where, to quote GM, they have a "level playing field" with Toyota, as GM can operate in China without their balance sheets dipping into the red with the debt load of pension and health payments to UAW workers in America.

Therefore, with this kind of shielded profit and loss, that doesn't sound at all to me like recirculating money back through the American economy.

GM's investment to increase global warming exponentially, by putting a car into the hands of, in GM's own words, "every young Chinese urban professional between 20 and 35 years old" (that otherwise got by with a bicycle and a train), and to "keep these customers with GM for life," again in GM's words, is significant. GM has five full production car factories in China, with immediate plans already in motion to invest 3 billion more dollars in China in the next year alone.

This doesn't count the many component supplier factories that GM doesn't own, but already uses to produce parts for all of their vehicles, including the American ones. Including the apple pie trucks assembled in America. Including MY own GM truck built in good 'ol Texas (the state with one of the highest steady influxes of language limited immigrant labor, emboldened and enabled by gaining employment, legally and illegally, from American companies).

I didn't mystery shop a dealership to listen to salesman. I simply looked in my backyard, at my own American assembled truck. I'm not sure what, if anything, was actually "Made in America" by these 18,000 workers on the brink of losing their jobs because of a percentage point gain by Toyota, because every part where I can see the country of origin on my apple pie truck was made in another country. Mexico. Canada. Sri Lanka. China. Even the basic driveline component, the GM driveshaft... was manufactured by the Shanghai GKN Drive Shaft Co., Ltd.

So, where did the money circulate from the manufacture of that driveshaft? According to the label on the driveshaft, the benefiting economy is the KangQiao Industrial Zone in Pudong, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. That's where the dollar spins (pun intended) from under my American brand, American "built" GM truck.

By contrast, let's take a look at Toyota. Go back to Detroit news to read how many full scale vehicle production plants that Toyota Motor Corporation has built on American soil over the last two decades, employing American workers that are raising American families (to be nationalistic about it) to build these plants, to oversee these plants, and to staff these plants. I lost count after a dozen new factories in the last decade.

I've been inside one such American Toyota plant a couple times, out here in California. Ironically, it used to be a GM plant, but GM idled it in the seventies, and the building sat dormant for many YEARS until Toyota came knocking, offering to put Americans to work and revitalize blue collar opportunities admidst a sea of white collar majorities in Silicon Valley. With Toyota's investment, this once dormant plant reopened as a joint venture called New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., and within this plant, GM's most reliable and trustworthy cars are built... as they are simply rebadged Toyota Corollas built on the same line using Japanese quality manufacturing principles and philosophies.

American workers build Toyota's most popular, highest selling truck, the Tacoma in this plant as well.

When I look underneath my apple pie USA GM truck "built in Texas", I see that the truck's backbone, the most core component to the truck, the foundation upon which all the rest of the truck is built... the FRAME... was actually manufactured in Canada. Likewise, when I look underneath my apple pie USA Ford truck "built in Kentucky", I see that this truck's frame was actually manufactured in Mexico. Now a truck's frame is about the largest heaviest single part on the entire vehicle. It's a pretty big deal to have to import pieces that large from out of the country. From Canada all the way down to Texas. From Mexico all the way up to Kentucky.

Since the top two iconic nameplates of American brand trucks, Chevy and Ford, are using imported frames for even their domestically assembled trucks, one might come to think that Americans are simply no good at building frames?

Toyota doesn't seem to think so. You see, for those Toyota Tacoma trucks that are built in California? Guess where the frames are manufacturered? The Tacoma frames are also built in California, by Dana Corporation in Stockton. I see regular "just in time deliveries" every time I drive on Interstate 580.

Now, to back to your concern about where the "profits" go from a traditionally American corporation to compared with a traditionally Japanese corporation. The reality is, both corporations are multi national corporations, with multiple subsidiaries and partnerships around the globe, that have the means and motivation to shift profit and loss and otherwise adjust their accounting to their best benefit tax and tariff wise, from country to country. We cannot see into the boardrooms to follow that money.

But we do continually read of the hefty 7 figure salaries paid to the very top excecutives at GM, especially when profits are up. So yes, a very select few Americans do profit from running American corporations. What do these executives do with all this excess windfall beyond what any normal person needs to meet daily expenses, college tuitions, and retirement? Why go on family vacations of course... to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, to the South of France, to Europe. Which is not exactly reinvesting profits in the American economy, is it?

Of course, we working stiffs can't really see or know how the top brass spend their bucks or report their profits. What is most clearly seen, however, from the stand point of middle class Americans, is that Toyota is investing in the United States, while GM is investing in China. Toyota is creating jobs for Americans, while GM is shifting them offshore and over borders to the north and the south. Toyota is fiercely investing in newer technologies that make our world, our entire world, a healthier, quieter place to live, breath and drive. GM is still investing in expanding older technologies to exploit markets of the world that haven't driven yet.

Toyota is helping Americans build vehicles that run for Americans, while GM is helping other nations build vehicles that Americans want to run from.

 

This all started out with a big bravo for Toyota for beating out GM. If I lived in Japan I would certainly be joining the bravo crowd. But I'm a concerned American. I hate the fact that the best cars are now built in Japan and Europe and that Detroit is slowly but surely becoming the has-been of the auto industry. It's sad. I would truly love to see that trend turned around. True, I own a Prius, I love its technology, its reliability, and its bang for the buck, but I'm certainly not proud of the fact that I've turned my back on the American auto industry. So .. Okay .. I bought a Prius .. but one thing I will not do, I will not cheer for for the fact that Toyota is taking over the top spot from GM. I feel bad. I feel bad for the fact that I helped make that transition happen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Dec 22 2006, 09:02 AM) [snapback]365678[/snapback]</div>

Hey Malorn,

Didn't you write a while back that you were buying a Toyota dealership to go along with your other franchises? What happened, did the deal fall through? Is that why you are so bitter?

 

But Toyota doesn't have to outsell GM. That is GMs choice. They made that choice by making bad, short-sighted business decisions.

Detroit doesn't have to throw in the towel, roll over and play dead. They're choosing to do that. By making bad, short-sighted decisions.

If they bit the bullet and gave up profits in the short term they'd be back on top in the long term. But that would also mean a firing a lot of top management that got them where they are today and replacing them with innovative, thinking outside the box replacements. They're not willing to do that. They're not willing to cut top management, cut the pay of top management, and institute some changes that will cost them money.

I've read it here. Designing "new" cars using only what is already available on the parts shelf? That isn't innovative. And that's why the Japanese are outselling them. They not only tolerate mediocrity, they reward it. It's become a sacred duty.

I liked my 1996 Saturn. But my 2005 Prius is made better. Because "good enough" and mediocrity is not acceptable to Toyota. It shouldn't be acceptable to GM either. And don't whine to me about the Unions. The guys on the line do as they're told. If GM wanted to build as well as Toyota, it should be built that way. But if they want to design as well as Toyota, that is going to require some retooling in upper management. And those guys aren't likely to fire themselves, no matter how juicy the severance package is. I wouldn't trust them to hire replacements either. Because they have no idea the kind of engineer they need to hire. But I think the main reason nothing will change is Pride. They are too proud to admit they've done anything to get them where they are now. Much easier to blame the Unions.

One thing that better NOT happen in all this is the Federal Government bailing them out. I will not tolerate my tax dollars being wasted on that kind of voluntary incompetence. They can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, take pay cuts and work harder. NO BAILOUTS!

 

Not too terribly suprised to hear it. GM has been putting out some terrible cars, and so so full size trucks & SUVs. The longevity is so NOT engineered in, and the whole driving impression is one of "cheapness"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Dec 28 2006, 07:57 PM) [snapback]367862[/snapback]</div>

I honestly don't get this ... sorry.

You're comparing a new car to a car that was built a decade ago? If you sit in a Saturn Aura today (I dare you), you'll probably say "Wow, my Prius is nice, but the Aura is made better". It's just not a fair comparison to compare something new to something that's now a decade old.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 28 2006, 07:06 PM) [snapback]367872[/snapback]</div>

Well fair or not you are only as good as the last car you sold me. If the qualitry of that car can't stand up after 5 years why should I believe the new one will be any better? Is GM's 2006 hybrid made better than my Prius?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Dec 28 2006, 09:45 PM) [snapback]367896[/snapback]</div>

But it's a 10 year old car! Do you think a 10 year old Corolla or Camry is as good as a Prius today?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 28 2006, 06:16 PM) [snapback]367918[/snapback]</div>

Those may not be as good as a brand new Prius but sure as hell better than any GM product of the same vintage, Saturn included. Take a look at the Consumer Reports Buying Guide detailed reliability charts.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 28 2006, 09:16 PM) [snapback]367918[/snapback]</div>

I believe my point was missed. My 1983 Delta 88 had 0 warranty trips. The biggest repair was replacing a bunch of parts when maintenance was needed because it had "early production" steering parts and all the replacements were "late production". My 1989 Delta 88 had 1 warranty trip. The fuel injectors on two cylinders randomly shut down on the highway. Pressing on the brake reset the computer and the injectors were fine. Computer replacement solved the problem. My 2000 Intrigue had 4 seperate warranty problems and 1 was resolved to my satisfaction. Additionally, the only thing that was fixed with 1 trip to the dealer was a burned out light bulb. I can live with the others as they are mostly annoyances. Next month she'll be 7 and you can add 2 burned out lights (fuel door release button & shift knob) to the list.

Do you notice a trend? The newer the car, the greater the problems. What evidence can be provided that GM has improved the quality of its 2006 product compared to 2000? Let me turn your question around. Is a 5 year old Prius as good as a new GM car? I'll go as far to say that I believe my 2006 Prius will be at least as good as a 2011 GM.

My Prius isn't perfect as it spent a week at the dealer to replace the ABS then another day at the dealer for the dimmer switch to be reconnected but at least the problem was fixed. If my Prius is going to act like my Olds, when can I expect the whistling, leaking (water), and the burning of oil?