There comes a time in many a life when an individual must prove to the world they are no longer the student, they have become the master. The transition usually arrives on the field of battle, whether it’s a real battlefield, competitive sports, academia, entertainment or business. In the case of Toyota, their moment of ascension arrived when their products outsold General Motors’ in the first quarter of 2007. Toyota bested The General by a score of 2,348,000 to 2,260,000. Toyota is the new numero uno. But it still has much to learn, if it is to avoid following its old, corpulent mentor's footsteps off the high tower of greatness.
Before Toyota became the heavy weight sumo champion of the world, their corporate samurai wanted to be just like Ford, and then GM. After all, the Americans in general, and General Motors in specific, were the automotive industry. The General dominated the world’s largest automotive market– to the point where the U.S. federal government tried to break up the behemoth by hiving-off Chevrolet. Its products were spread throughout the world, capturing customers in every corner of the globe.
Toyota came to America as representing (for many) a former military aggressor, the enemy. Starting with the Toyopet, they peddled funny little cars that were the subject of scorn, derision and dismissal. Undaunted, Toyota refined its products and process (which allowed for faster model changes). Toyota’s tighter panel gaps, better engines and conservative design helped it establish a beachhead. But it was reliability that set them apart and secured their success.
Enthusiasts may label Toyota’s products “soulless appliances,” but the automaker’s mass appeal lies in this anodyne dependability. While GM, Ford and Chrysler concentrated on style and power, Toyota focused its energies on quality and, thus, reliability. The focus catapulted them to the top.
Flash forward to 2006. Toyota was ranked fourth in JD Power and Associates’ Initial Quality Study (IQS), with only 106 problems per 100 vehicles. Lexus has historically been the number one brand according to JD and the gang. In 2007, just as Toyota sold more cars than everybody else, the company initial quality ranking dropped from fourth to seventh, behind such historically horrid brands as Jaguar and Lincoln. Lexus was knocked from its perch at the top of the IQS mountain by Porsche.
What of the newest addition to the ToMoCo household? Scion has never cracked the IQS top 10. In fact, in 2004, a year after the brand was introduced into the U.S., Scion was ranked thirty-fourth, one slot above Porsche. As stated, Porsche turned it around. So why hasn’t Toyota taken care of the newest addition to his family?
Scion is a spooky echo of GM’s Saturn. Both brands birthed when their corporate motherships were flush with cash. Both brands were heralded as changing how consumers would buy vehicles, with fresh vehicle design, friendly dealers and no haggle pricing.
Saturn has lost is its way, but what about Scion? For a few years, all seemed to be going well, much like Satrun's early days. Scion released cool, unconventional, entry-level vehicles that were highly customizable. Then came the first redesigns.
Gone are the cheeky, interesting shapes of the first-generation xA and xB. In their place: blander, fatter vehicles that seem tailored to an older generation. As TTAC’s Paul Niedermeyer reported, Toyota seems to have learned some not-so-good tricks from GM, managing to ignore and dilute a successful brand’s direction with lazy, “bigger is better” design.
In Scion, ToMoCo also seems to have unlearned one of its better tricks: maintaining model names. Toyota has one of the most loyal consumer bases in the automotive industry (again, due to its rep for build quality). Keeping the same core model names has played a large part in generating and directing this brand loyalty, as most Toyotaphiles simply trade in their old Camrys or Corollas for completely new ones.
Scion has dropped the xA moniker in favor of its all new replacement, the xD. Ignoring the fact that the American psyche is all about getting an "A" (when was the last time you were rewarded for bringing home a D?), Toyota has hampered consumer loyalty to the xA and Scion by dumping a decent model and its moniker for an inferior bloatmobile.
Toyota says its taken dramatic steps to sort out its quality issues. As it’s what they do best, we should see some movement soon. But the company is just beginning to learn that doing just one thing better than anyone else puts you in a vulnerable position. The competition can catch up. Unless they learn the lessons of their vanquished enemies, they will be condemned to repeat them. It looks as if that process is already in motion.
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It doesn’t matter if Toyota drops to 20th in the IQS, no matter how many recalls or even what out of warranty service costs: Toyota = quality in many minds and that is reflected in resale prices. Honda is the same way, with beat up civic 4 doors going for far more than they should used. Toyota gets to ride the quality wagon while the domestics are stuck with a reputation for bad transmissions, faulty head gaskets, safety recalls, and poor dealer service support. These are not undeserving, but buying a camcordia does not mean 150K of trouble free driving for everyone. But it DOES mean higher resale value should it start needing repairs, something you won’t get with a Taurus, Town and Country, or Impala.
Very interesting article. Without a doubt, Toyota quality has slipped the last few years – just take a look at the interior of the Yaris and Auris in Europe. You wonder if, in their rush to take over GM, they have taken their eye of the ball…
The same with the FJ, to get the concept to production they cut corners on quality and the quality of the materials used, yet the perception of the american public still remains strong….
This seems to be the case with most if not all their models. No wonder they can create such profits by using cheaper materials (imagine the uproar if GM did it)and having little legacy and healthcare costs. It all counts.
On the other hand though its the usual trap of customers wanting or being perceived to want bigger vehicles, so vehicles grow to give class leading interior space or to shoehorn in the latest safety gadgets. Wish people would look at how Mazda reduced all the size and weight issues with their upcoming B car. very clever.
For Toyota to lose their perception of top notch quality and reliability, its gonna take decades of product decline.
Just like it did for GM.
In principle, I agree with this article, but there are a few points which need to be put into context.
Firstly, Ford won 4 awards in a survey (might have been JD Power) and one of them was with regards to the quality of their interiors. In the same award, there was Audi, who, in my opinion, has some of the best interiors on the market; and yet Audi didn’t even get a sniff of the award. So, pardon me, if I don’t take some of these awards too seriously.
Secondly, remember until 3 years ago, Toyota was making about a 1 million short of GM’s total vehicles and Toyota’s quality and reliability was light years in front of GM’s. It’s only this recent expansion that’s causing the dip.
Back to the article, I’ll be the first to admit, that Toyota have slipped, somewhat and I know for a fact that Toyota’s cars are nowhere near the quality they used to be*. But what we also have to remember, is Toyota cars are still one of the market leaders in terms of quality and reliability. Now I have GREAT respect for Hyundai and how hard they’ve worked to get where they have today. But, have you ever been inside a Hyundai? Now, I’m sure Hyundai interiors are durable and probably will go the distance, but how cheap and nasty do they look?! I recently drove a Euro Ford Focus for company business, and was severely disappointed at the state of the interior. Cheap plastics and the dials looked second rate. So, let’s not forget where Toyota REALLY stand in the rankings.
Another point is that, Toyota have built a shining reputation. Ask a regular customer on the street “When you think of Toyota, what’s the first thing that springs to mind?”. Reliable vehicles. And I reckon, it’ll be that reputation which will help them survive the dip. Recently, the board of directors and Katsuaki Watanabe announced they were going to kill this quality problem once and for all. Toyota aren’t stupid, take away their quality and reliabliity record and what have you got left? Good looking cars? Do me a cheesy quaver!
Finally, if we compare GM and Toyota head on what are the results?
GM and Toyota produce a similar amount of cars each, yet one maker is making profits on each car they sell, the other can’t even give their cars away?
One maker still has a so called “perception problem” while the other is held as a benchmark for quality and reliability.
One maker enforces lean production and a efficiently run plants, the other has the “stack ‘em high, sell them cheap” doctrine embossed in their management’s mind.
If I told you this and asked you to lay a bet which company would survive the next 5 years with no problem whatsoever, who would you go for…..?
* = In 1989, when I was young, my parent bought Toyota Corolla executive. It was one of the last model made in Japan before they transferred production to the UK. If you looked under the bonnet, all the sticker were in Japanese. Anyway, fast forward to 2005, the car is rusting but still going strong. My father now doesn’t have the car serviced because it’s not worth it due to the value of the car. My next door neighbour who’s a Toyota mechanic, examined the car and found out the car had been driving for 5000 miles with 1 litre of black sludge in the engine and no coolant in the system! Theoretically, the engine should have seized up long time ago, but it still kept coming back for more! We put some new oil and coolant in the engine and the engine still purred like a kitten! Now THAT’S a well built engine. True story.
I read somewhere back that JDP’s IQS (and many other of their studies) have a statistical margin of error that’s far bigger than the margin of victory that the winners claim. So it’s not the year to year “victories” that matter, but the long term trend.
Let’s not forget that IQS scores were narrow enough that JDP had to introduce more points to ding the automakers with.
Let’s see how Michael Karesh weighs in on this.
But in my opinion, and noting starlightmica’s point above, ol’ JD’s initial quality survey (90 days!) is pure, unadulterated rubbish!
I say this as someone who owned the same car (1980 Volvo 240) for 21 years — 1982 to 2003 — and 245K miles. Ninety days means nothing. These aren’t the bad old days of cars falling apart or failing to start when new.
BTW, despite all the alleged “woes” befalling Toyota with respect to quality, my two Camrys (’04 and ‘05) have had zero “issues” (except for some weird “stiction” in the steering of the older one when I make a left turn at lower speeds). This last could be connected with my son driving the car about 40 miles on a very rough unpaved road south out of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a road that the Nat’l Park Service discourages using.
One of the major issues never covered by the JDP IQS is the demographic and expectations of buyers. Buick’s IQS scores can only have more to do with the fact that they are judged solely against the crap they were building five years ago and not against other cars on the market. No reasonable person could sit down in an Audi, or Lexus and rate a Buick highly.
The Consumer Reports ratings are probably a more reliable means to identify actual quality issues, since they count failures, but it remains a far-from-scientific study of real quality.
The one area where Toyota schooled everyone is in the “dealer experience”; starting in 1989, Lexus dealers set a new standard for expectations in the luxury car business. Anyone buying a Mercedes or BMW now reaps the benefit of Toyota’s entry into this end of the market.
It seems unlikely they have taken their eye off the ball, since quality is such a basic thread in their corporate identity. Similarly, GM continues to struggle with Alfred Sloan’s idea that they were not in business to make automobiles, but solely to make money. This perverse and wholly American approach to offering a product has similarly been bequeathed on virtually the whole of American business, and we are rife with lowest-common-denominator products and services offered at bargain prices. For all that might be said of Scion, one need only drive the other offerings in their price range to see that Toyota still offers a high level of content even at the mass-market level. As one ponders Toyota’s fall, take an afternoon and drive a Chevy Cobalt and a Scion back to back.
it is hard to compare scion and saturn. saturn promised to fight imports, but all it had was 1 model in 3 variations. the next gen was already opel based derivative. Saturn started to share even exteriors with opel vectra. Can you remember any scion sharing any sheetmetal with any toyota product? can you remember any imported platform for scion? non japanese platform?
new vue is just a daewoo rebadge. japanese will NEVER EVER go the cheapest way. they will actually BUILD the cars THEMSELVES. They are never going the detroit way, because they never do. the only japanese companies that have problems, are the ones that have something to do with USA car manufacturing.. read- Mitsubishi- chrysler. GM- isuzu.
Toyota doesn`t have problems with quality. and now read this-
TOYOTA HAS PROBLEMS WITH NORTH AMERICAN AUDIENCE WHERE QUALITY DEMANDS ARE LOWER AND THUS THEY COULD THEORETICALLY AFFORD LOWER GRADE MATERIALS IN THEIR VEHICLES THAN IN EUROPE. tOYOTA HAS PROBLEMS IN NORTH AMERICA WHERE THEY HAVEN`T IMPLEMENTED 100% THEIR OWN STANDARDS, AND WHERE AMERICAN MANUFACTURING CULTURE HASN`T BEEN ELIMINATED.
tOYOTA DOESN`T SHARE EXTERIORS. THEY DON`T FAKE DIVERSITY, THEY ACTUALLY MAKE CARS.
bEHIND ANY TOYOTA PRODUCT STANDS TOYOTA , NOT OTHER REBADGED PRODUCT .
tOYOTA INVESTS 15B DOLLARS IN R&D TO BECOME A BENCHMARK IN QUALITY.
tHEY ADD NEW MODELS, MODEL CUTTING IS A SIGN OF SALES DECREASE.
Toyota leads the market also in technologies, so even don`t draw parallels to gm. When was the last time a japanese car manufacturer bankrupted? right. never. FAIR GAME.
And toyota outsold poor gm already an eon ago, because gm does false mathematics counting in their production all rebadged opels, daewoos, saabs, etc. Imagine you had to count out the vehicles that are based on foreign platforms. Was pontiac vibe also included in gm share? How many parts in the vibe did Gm construct? ZERO. gm is already far behind toyota.
ditto the worlds strongest economies.
USA- GDP- 13.3 trillion, China- 10trillion. USA- external debt- 10.2 trillion. China-305billion. Gold reserve- USA- 69billion. China-1 trillion.
service/manufacturing distribution- USA- services 78% manufacturing 20% China-services 40% manufact. 48%. NOw who is the superpower? I even didn`t mention japan……..
Now matter how hard you try to fake or simulate, at the end you get what you really have earned. FAIR GAME. Unless you marry these 2 words with detroit, they are destined to an annihillation. Welcome to reality!
lunatics@inbox.lv
even the car mags are printing editorials about ‘why does toyota get a free pass for churning out big gas guzzlers, by selling a few hybrids?’
edgett: I’m no fan of Buicks, but Buick has scored well in JDP surveys for years, and Consumer Reports has also given many Buicks (including the current LaCrosse and Lucerne) top ratings for reliability.
My family and I took a 16 hour road trip in a 2007 Camry LE recently. After thirty-two hours in a Camry, my wife bought a new Accord. Here’s why:
1. We were surprised at the cheap interior fittings. Knobs and surfaces looked cheap and felt cheap.
2. Try a left-shoulder safety check in my 2000 Crown Victoria. You see the lane to your left. Try it in my wife’s 1997 Taurus. You see the lane to your left. Try it in a 2007 Camry. You see the B pillar.
3. We had a 4 cylinder. Try a merge into an interstate slow lane. Lots of noise. Wait for the transmission to decide to downshift. Note that it did not downshift enough. Wait for your sphincter to return to normal.
4. Look at the cruise control stalk for a minute or two. Then laugh. Practise “cruise control by feel” for an hour.
5. After dark, try some talk radio on the AM band. Then make a note: when you have to buy a car, buy one with some sensitivity on the AM band. I do remember, though, that the Camry wipers were really effective at 70mph.
6. During our second day with the Camry, my son and I reached the same conclusion. Driving the Camry is not fun. It is work. Driving our Taurus is fun in a bizarre kind of way. You get to like the firm suspension. You get to, well, find the agricultural noises entertaining. You find the handling with P6’s actually sporty. Driving the Crown Vic is fun. In a bizarre kind of way. It has a personality. A jiggly-squooshy personality. A “get out of the fast lane or speed up–I am not a cop” personality. A ” I can’t reach the pedals and the seat isn’t all the way back” kind of fun. With good tires, you can power-turn the CV in a most engaging fashion–the suspension stays settled, and a strong left leg on the firewall helps you to stay seated and in control. Passengers who have never been in a RWD auto simply cannot figure out how the beast turns with such precision and authority. The Camry, however, is not fun. It does not communicate. It might be on a road. It might be in a turn. Yawn.
After our return to home base, we test drove an Accord, just to be sure. The interior was inviting, in a “thank you for purchasing me, you won’t be sorry. See how I can make a cheap interior look inviting and professional” kind of way. The four-cylinder sounded pretty. The transmission knew what I wanted and needed and gave it to me instantly. The sunroof was quiet and silky. The seats were so good as to be not noticeable. You could see that a team of engineers who liked working with each other sweated the details in the engine compartment. The steering was direct, informative.
If Ford does something interesting with the CV, I shall get another one in about eighteen months. If not, I shall get myself an Accord. I guess I’ll be getting an Accord. BTW, I ride a twenty-two year old Honda motorcycle–a V4 with almost as much horsepower as a Civic. I don’t baby it, yet it looks and performs perfectly. That tells you something about Honda.
Sorry, but I think that it’s a stretch to compare Scion with Saturn as part of some cautionary tale, as they are very different brand concepts.
Saturn was meant to be a laboratory within GM to move the culture away from its traditions and into the Toyota camp of lean production and customer focus, and to make customers associate American workmanship with quality. It has ultimately failed because it did not create the cultural changes within GM that were needed to compete, a failure for which we all now see that the company is paying the price, and because it did not turn customer perceptions about American automotive quality.
Scion is just a gateway sub-brand within Toyota meant to lure in young people. Its goal is to get the kids who might be tempted by Hondas, Nissans, Mitsubishis, etc. to buy a Toyota. Toyota has a long track record of conservative styling; Scion is meant to be a bit more edgy and youth oriented.
Scion was really the byproduct of the continuous failure of cars such as the Echo to skew down Toyota’s age demographics. The Echo was meant to bring in the first time car buyers, but it ended up being most popular with the senior crowd. Automakers want young audiences, and since Toyota was having trouble at the nameplate level, it opted instead for the sub-brand concept.
If you want to measure Scion’s success or failure, the questions that you should be asking are whether the cars are popular with young customers, and whether those sales are making it easier to convert those customers to buying Toyota and Lexus products as they get older. It’s too early to address the latter point; I don’t have the data to address the former point, but I believe that they have had some success with wooing young buyers, although the xB box thing has attracted a lot more grey hairs than Toyota had probably wanted.
jurisb:
When was the last time a japanese car manufacturer bankrupted? right. never.
Nissan would’ve had Renault not stepped in.
And who is it that owns opel, daewoo, saab, etc?
Lexus can rebadge Toyotas, Infiniti can rebadge Nissans, but GM can’t rebadge other GMs because they aren’t built in the US?
KatiePuckrik:
In the same award, there was Audi, who, in my opinion, has some of the best interiors on the market; and yet Audi didn’t even get a sniff of the award.
In my opinion Audi interiors (and everything else) is garbage. So I guess we average out ;)
Flash forward to 2006. Toyota was ranked fourth in JD Power and Associates’ Initial Quality Study (IQS), with only 106 problems per 100 vehicles.
Well, Chevrolet only had 124 problems per 100 vehicles. Taken on a per vehicle basis, that’s an advantage for Toyota of 1.06 problems per vehicle versus 1.24 problems per vehicle for Chevrolet. So, Toyota had 0.18 fewer problems per vehicle than Chevrolet.
If you look at the 2006 vehicle dependability study (three year reliability, which still isn’t long enough), Toyota had 1.79 problems per vehicle versus Chevrolet with 24.1 problems vehicle. That means there is a difference, after three years, of 0.62 problems per vehicle. Doesn’t sound like much to me.
Obviously, if you muliply these numbers by the units sold, the differences will grow. However, I would like to know the margin of error and how many people were surveyed. I suspect the margin is relatively high (what is a problem??) and the number surveyed is relatively low, given the number of cars.
A few years ago, Hummer took a huge hit in these rankings. I later heard that around half of the quality complaints were poor fuel mileage, high road/wind noise, and poor ride quality. That is why I take these rankings with a grain of salt.
Well, jurisb has made some good points. Here are some hopefully good counterpoints.
Of course, he “forgot” to mention the reality of the massive amounts of air,water and ground pollution, and the resultant ill health and deaths of the Chinese population compared to the huge – and expensive – efforts that the United States has put forth for 60 years, really huge efforts over the past 40 years. He “forgot” to mention that in China, you can still “disappear” just as in the prior East Germany with the Stazi, or the Soviet Union or modern Russia, if you disagree with the government about something.
This is not to say that his points are inaccurate – but they are not the “whole picture” either. STILL our massive debt and relatively tiny gold reserves are – disasterous. Plus the
fact that there has been no public account of the Ft Knox gold reserves since Eisenhower was President – what kind of company could “get by” without an accounting of it’s financial reserves for 47 to 50 years?! Ft Knox could be totally empty for all we know.
Incidentally, I looked at some past IQS results. Toyota had 121 problems per 100 vehicles in 2003, 104 in 2004, and 105 in 2005.
Chevrolet had 130 problems per 100 vehicles in 2003, 119 in 2004, and 127 in 2005.
@Sajeev:
By that reckoning then, in a perverse way we might be at 1970 again.
Toyota = GM in the early seventies. They are adopting the attitude that killed GM. “People love us. They will buy anything we make!” Toyota has gone seriously downhill over the last 5 years or so. I twill come back and bite them. Just look how badly 10 year old Toyo has aged. The interiors are faded and the mouldings are discolored and they look tired. The good part is they still run great. But seem to be falling apart around a good running drivetrain.
The JD Power IQS is virtually useless except as a marketing tool for the automakers.
As I’ve said before, the only REAL measure of long-term reliability (outside of niche brands like Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, etc.) is resale values. The market, especially one made up of millions of consumers, is absolutely reliable in this regard.
Which is why Toyota and Honda stand far above the other auto makers.
As for surveys, Consumer Reports long term relaibility measures are about the most consistent and believeable.
Has Toyota slipped? Probably. But it is a difference of degrees, not a complete degradation. They still have a long way to go before they enter Big 2.5 territory.
BTW, the new Scions are ugly.
Re 210delray:
But in my opinion, and noting starlightmica’s point above, ol’ JD’s initial quality survey (90 days!) is pure, unadulterated rubbish!
And if you examine responses closely, like the dopey soccer moms and/or pot-bellied execs who complain about ‘wind’ or ‘road’ noise or ‘harsh’ suspension in their automatic tranny RX8, you realize it’s even more than rubbish…
@partsisparts
My first car was an ‘82 Cadillac Cimarron, which got me moving to Toyota pretty damn quickly. I had two late ’80s Tercels to get me through high school and college. Even with plasticky interiors, they felt rock solid and never broke. I never had to even change light bulbs.
I don’t think Toyota has the same arrogant attitude that GM had in the past. Haven’t we seen them continually improve upon their mistakes? They’ll improve quality once again. They’re smart like that.
@ v65magnafan1:
That said, I moved to Honda and have never looked back, because I sense the passion that they have for economical, high-quality driver’s cars. I have two Civics in my garage (an EX and an Si), as well as an ‘83 VT500 Ascot. My wife has an ‘04 Metropolitan scooter. They are all fun, economical, and reliable. Accords may seem bland to people because they are seen everywhere, but I’m glad you helped to point out that there are vast differences between it and the Camry, both in focus and execution. The manual V6 Accord has to be one of the ultimate out-of-the-box sleepers out there.
I think the author has a wider point than merely pointing out Toyota's slipping quality, which can and most probably will be corrected.
Mr. Rush is saying that quality is no longer enough.
American consumers moved from domestic products to Toyotas for reliability. But if Toyota assumes that reliability alone can sustain the brand, they are making a dangerous mistake. We are an aspirational people. "Soulless appliances" are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style.
I see reason to believe that Toyota "gets it."
Lexus' new L-Finesse design language is coherent and not entirely unattractive. Scion unleased Bento box styling on U.S. buyers with success. The Tundra is getting there. And the new Camry, well, it tries to be different.
But I also see reason to believe Toyota is vulnerable on the design front.
The new xB's gangsta look is wildly inauthentic. And while there is nothing wrong with any of their mainstream models' design, they are bland. Respected, but perhaps not entirely loved.
In case you think this is just another enthusiasts looking for a hit of Ben and Jerry's when everyone else is happy with generic vanilla, remember the role styling played in Detroit's heyday. Surely that itch remains to be scratched.
Zarba:
As I’ve said before, the only REAL measure of long-term reliability is resale value.\
The wisdom of crowds strikes again.
RF:
We are an aspirational people. “Soulless appliances” are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style.
But we are willing to compromise, and so Toyota has captured 16% of the US market in the process.
I think it’s way early to start pulling the sheet over Toyota’s corporate face. For that matter, it’s a little early for GM.
“Initial quality statistics” are like those made up “competitions” in kindergarten where everybody gets to win. Making a car that will not fall apart for 90 days isn’t exactly an engineering feat (even though in the past the domestic makers seemed to be rather marginal at this task.) The trick is to make a car that will still run strong at 200k.
Incidentally, the author left out one of Toyota and Honda’s other feats that catapulted them to the top of the automotive world, and that was the ability to do more with less. The fact that Toyota and Honda can make cars that will put out the same HP with a 4 cyl that the domestics have to use a 6 to reach is a point in their favor with a lot of customers, including me. Detroit’s standard response always seems to have been to try and shoehorn a bigger engine under the hood, which means they also take the award for “missing the point.”
partsisparts “Toyota = GM in the early seventies. They are adopting the attitude that killed GM. “People love us. They will buy anything we make!” Toyota has gone seriously downhill over the last 5 years or so.”
Sorry don’t see it. That attitude was exemplified and is still exemplified by GM simply not taking a serious interest in market segments like small cars. Show me a huge under served market segment that is simply ignored by Toyota.
That attitude is also recorded and well documented by industry insiders like Iaccoca and Delorean, as well as industry observers like Brock Yates and Maryann Keller and countless others. When I start hearing it from Industry observers that Toyota execs basically told them we don’t care what you think then let me know
When Executive at Toyota are paying themselves lavish bonuses when Toyota is losing money let me know GM and Ford did not go from dominance to the gutter in 1 or 2 years it was a long 20 to 30 year ride of pissing off customers one at a time.
JD Powers doesn’t measure true long term durability because what manufacturer cares how well their cars last say up to 7 or 10 years.
I live in Florida I don’t see Toyotas interiors etc age with time any worse than other brands. I would actually say that generally it is the GM interiors that don’t hold up well to the sun and heat
Sherman:
You have to agree though that driving the 2007 Corolla or the 2007 Camry does not really give the feeling that they were put together with lots of passion for building economy cars, right?
Sherman:
I am not defending GM but simply saying Toyo is not the car co it was as far as quality. Last year they recalled more cars than they built.
Keep in mind quality is percieved. I live in the NY area and have really taken notice that recent Toyotas have not aged well. I am a former Toyota mechanic and one of the things I liked about them at the time was the cars aged very well. Now, they look worn and tired after a few years.
What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar, lower executive type of car. This is a person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them. They are entry level customers or people who want the FX4 or Z71 to run through the mud and laugh like idiots. If you take the same person, driving the same way for 5 years in an Impala vs a Camry, you will see a similarity in reliability.
TheNatural:
July 31st, 2007 at 1:29 pm
What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar, lower executive type of car. This is a person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them.
I don’t know about that, plenty of Toyota owners abuse their maintenance schedules just like Chevy or Ford owners do.
Most people (I don’t recall the survey numbers I read, but it was >75%) don’t even open the owner’s manual of their cars ONCE, much less stick with changing things like air and fuel filters on 15-30k mile schedules.
How someone could spend $15-60k on something and not read the manual is beyond me.
The car market is brutal (pricing wise), and all the popular priced manufacturers have been ruthlessly cutting costs. Street prices of cars have not kept up with inflation. It was well documented that the Camry from around ‘94 – ‘98 was the pinnacle; it had superb build quality, and such Lexus-like things as double door seals, etc. Toyota has had (almost) no choice but to cut corners.
The big question is whether T.’s cost cutting is more problematical than their competitors. It’s going to take some years to really see.
bfg9k
I understand that there are some Toyota owners that abuse them, however more often then not it is an American brand consumer that has the problems.
I work for a Saturn/Chevy/Toyota dealership franchise. The Toyota customer will 9 out of 10 times have excellent credit and make over $40,000 a year (in central Texas that is good money, not great but good). The Chevy customer wants a car with more horsepower than he has for a credit score. These two different type of people are buying for different reasons and handle their car differently. You can see this in our service department. Saturn customers (which is GM parts just like Chevy) have the same amount of problems as a Toyota, because the customer that buys Saturn is the same kind that buys Toyota. So in my experience GM has been the same as Toyota with like-minded people
“Toyota seems to have learned some not-so-good tricks from GM, managing to ignore and dilute a successful brand’s direction with lazy, “bigger is better” design.”
Lazy? Perhaps Scion is demand-driven. Perhaps Americans demand “Bigger is Better”. Auto companies supply demand.
“Ignoring the fact that the American psyche is all about getting an “A” (when was the last time you were rewarded for bringing home a D?), Toyota has hampered consumer loyalty to the xA and Scion by dumping a decent model and its moniker for an inferior bloatmobile.”
The xA did not sell as well as Scion would have liked. Scion can create a improved xA or all new xD. Those that were not impressed with the xA now will go look at the all-new xD and might find it to their liking while those that bought an xA will still go check out the xD. Maybe the xA was not bloaty/solid enough for the American consumer(?) An “all-new” model from Toyota creates excitement while an “all-new” model from 2.801 creates angst from reliablility concerns.
It will be interesting to see if the all-new xD out-sells the improved xB…The market will decide.
The market has spoken. Design is less important to the masses than perceived reliability. Performance is less important than reliability. Safety is more important than design or performance, but not as important as reliability.
This should be intuitive, should it not? After all, that new car buyer is going to get a reminder of his purchase every 30 days in the form of a check paid to the finance company. The only thing worse than having to pay $350/month for your car is having to pay $350/month for your car and having to shell out a few thousand bucks to replace the transmission/catalytic converter/ac compressor etc. Long after the thrill of acceleration has gone and long after that new car smell has dissipated, those monthly payments remain and if the car is costing the customer money on top of that, you can bet he won’t be happy!
I own a 2006 Scion tC. I was looking for something cheap, trouble free and with a modicum of entertainment. For the most part it has delivered. I have enjoyed the car and the combination of features/price is hard to beat. I have faith in the engine and transmission to last a long time, but I’m not so sure about the rest of the car.
The thing has more rattles, squeaks and noises coming from the interior than a 25 year old Soviet cargo plane and I can’t shake the feeling that the sunroof is going to self destruct one of these days. Above 30 mph it flaps in the wind like one of those sports-team flags you mount on your window and if the car’s body flexes enough you can hear it pop. (I’ve never seen a sunroof on an RSX or even a 1993 RX-7 flap in the wind like the one on my tC) It scares me to think about what it will be like in five years. The dealer has told me “it’s a twenty thousand dollar car, it’s not a Lexus, get over it”.
It also has the absolute worst paint of any new car on the road today. It’s that bad. 36,000 mostly highway miles and it looks like someone went to town with an automatic BB gun on the front end. Maybe those ridiculous looking auto-bras have a purpose after all.
Prior to cutting the check for it, I drank heavily from the Toyota Kool-Aid glass and my expectations were sky-high. It’s even built in Japan, so it it must be extra-special super good. Maybe that’s part reason for my disappointment. But it’s obvious Toyota cut corners in building this thing and the dealer experience has been absolutely abysmal, both sales and service.
If the purpose of Scion was to get me (someone at the upper end of their target demographic) to trade up in to a Toyota, then Scion is a failure. I don’t see my self buying a next-gen tC, especially if it follows the trend of the xB and xD and Toyota has nothing that interests me. Especially if I have to deal with the dealership.
IQS is based on the opinions of the people who bought the vehicle. How come no one quotes the statistics compiled by acutaries who figure the risk involved with vehicle service contracts? (Thanks to some lawyer we’re not allowed to call them “extended warranties” anymore.) Most service contracts are backed by insurers. The more reliable the model of vehicle, the less the risk, the lower the cost of the vehcile service contract, and vice versa.
Whoever said the Accord V6 6-speed was a good sleeper car wasn’t kidding. I bought one for my wife, we love it. Very fun to drive, after 30k miles, the only problem we’ve had was an outer door seal that warped, big deal, it’s rubber and it’s exposed to the elements.
V65MAGNAfan: I wanted one of those soo bad when they came out, but I couldn’t afford a street bike at the time. Now I own a ‘01 Goldwing but I’m afraid to commute on it as I see on average 1 accident per week on my way in to work. Honda is as passionate about building bikes as they are cars.
Robbie the Corolla and Camry might not be driver enthusiast cars but how many cars in the small or family sedan category are? As a card carrying member of the I will never own another volkswagen club, I can tell you that a Corolla and a Camry or a Cobalt or an Impala for that matter beats walking. Due to bad past experiences, I absolutely demand total reliability
Partsisparts Toyotas quality may have slipped. its just that I don’t see them as being in the same place as GM was in the 70s. GM never looked over their shoulder at anyone. Toyota has to compete with not only Detroit but Honda and Hyundai.
TheNatural “What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar…person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them….. If you take the same person, driving the same way for 5 years in an Impala vs a Camry, you will see a similarity in reliability.”
Hmmm so when I use to drive a chevy and I had it well maintained how come everything on that car still broke but when I treated my Honda the same way it just kept going and going and going. Don’t forget, many if not most of import car owners are former Detroit iron owners. The ones who maintain their cars well are going to do so whether the car is a Chevy or an import.
If Toyota stopped hiring graduates of the Pokeymon School of Design, they would be unstoppable.
Methinks Toyota is purposely coming out with weird designs just to try and slow their [too] rapid growth. Maybe their less-than-stylish designs are to help 2.801 sell their cars(?)
partsisparts is partially right. Toyota has adapted part of the GM mentality from the 70’s and 80’s. They assume that their processes are the ONLY way to do business. Now that they have developed the vaunted TPS, they will stick with what they know until it drags them down (or bastardize it to justify management decisions). They have become too big to change and have lost the edge and agility they had as a smaller automaker. For an example look at the geographic spread of their auto plants and component plants in the US. The TPS in Japan is concentrated in Toyota city, suppliers and plants working in close proximity.
Toyota still does a lot of things right. It will not happen overnight, but over the next 20-30 years, we will see Toyota follow the same path to self destruction as a new number one beats them at their own game.
Andrew Rush:
In the case of Toyota, their moment of ascension arrived when their products outsold General Motors’ in the first quarter of 2007. Toyota bested The General by a score of 2,348,000 to 2,260,000. Toyota is the new numero uno.
So is the position of “#1″ in this case judged solely by sales volume? If we look at a number of any other metrics, such as market value or annual net profit, Toyota has been “numero uno” for a LONG time.
Saturn has lost is its way, but what about Scion?
The reason the xA name was dropped is because it was a low seller and people didn’t really have much interest in that car. Toyota renamed the new model xD so none of the negative stigma of the xA would be inherited.
And why has Scion “lost it’s way” exactly? Scion boasts the youngest average customers out of any car brand in the US. Plus, Scion is mostly about customizability. One reason why Scion cars look so “plain” stock is because that makes them cheap to buy, and also gives lots of options for young people to modify them. Most Scion buyers are very satisfied with their purchases.
If anything is clear so far, it’s that Scion has been a bigger success than Saturn was because Scion has actually achieved the goal that Toyota set out to achieve, which is bring in more younger buyers.
The new Camry continues to sell like hot cakes, and fleet sales are less than 10%. That right there tells you that a huge retail demand exists for the Camry. Whether you like or hate the Camry’s styling, the key point is that it’s got people interested/talking about the car. The old Camry never did that.
Lexus has an upcoming supercar which will do wonders in terms of raising the status and styling reputation of Toyota. The Lexus “F” brand will also interest a whole new group of enthusiasts who may have never looked at Lexus before.
A lot of people on internet boards may consider Toyota’s new models as bland, ugly, boring, etc. etc. but the fact is that Toyota’s models have more effort put into styling that before, and each new Toyota model that comes out sells very well. Styling must have something to do with it, like with the new Camry’s sales.
And then there is Toyota’s leadership in hybrids. When people think “hybrids” these days most automatically think Toyota. This is giving Toyota’s vehicles a rep that they are very technologically advanced and that they are “cool” in a futuristic sort of way.
They assume that their processes are the ONLY way to do business. Now that they have developed the vaunted TPS, they will stick with what they know until it drags them down (or bastardize it to justify management decisions). They have become too big to change and have lost the edge and agility they had as a smaller automaker.
I disagree. TPS is a constantly evolving system, where Toyota has recently introduced some radical changes. The new Tundra’s aggressive styling was given the green light against the wishes of senior Toyota execs. They gave the green light because they understand they must think differently when it comes to the full size truck market in the US. Toyota gave the green light for Lexus to get their own supercar, and for them to get a performance sub-brand. This was again against the wishes of many senior Toyota execs, but was done in the end because they know they must change.
The recent changes to improve quality include hiring lots of new engineers, making more prototypes, making more precise blueprints, and giving bigger budgets for new models.
Toyota is also spending quite a bit of money hiring more stylists and designers.
The beauty with TPS is it’s flexibility. Even with very scarce resources, the system is designed to allow production operations to continue on a profitable scale.
Toyota’s corporate philosophy is fundamentally different than that of American automakers. Toyota’s corporate culture is filled with paranoia, and that is an important point as it makes Toyota full of surprises and able to rapidly adapt and change even if it seems unlikely. Intel uses a similar corporate culture, and for decades Intel has been at the top of the CPU business. They’ve experienced many ups and downs during the last 20 years, but right now Intel stands stronger than ever against it’s competition.
While there are similarities in the types of decisions that Toyota makes to what GM makes or has made, there is nothing, repeat nothing to suggest that TM will go down the road that GM is traveling. TM is nowhere near the place where it has p***ed off 2 whole generations of car buyers. This supreme arrogance that is the hallmark of GM is not even on the long range radar at TM. To suggest it is may reflect more wishful thinking on the part of those who say it than any actual evidence to support it. I would say that Toyota is more acutely aware of the factors that are destroying GM than GM is themselves. There is several orders of magnitude in difference between the way Toyota and GM approach the whole business of designing, building and manufacturing cars for the world’s markets. If you are waiting with bated breath for TM to end up where GM is now I would start breathing again cos it ain’t gonna happen at least not in the short term. I have not seen any indication that Toyota is infected with what Mr. Farrago once referred to as “Grosse Point Myopia” just yet.
I disagree with the premise here. There’s no indication that Toyota has been complacent in any aspect of thier business. They are always looking at ways to cut costs without cutting quality (and/or improve quality without increasing costs).
They also listen to the ordinary people who actually buy thier cars more than they do auto reviewers. Sales of the new Camry are sky-high. Complaints about it’s styling (which, although polarizing, is not boring) or interior quality by reviewers don’t seem to be affecting sales one bit.
I believe the xB grew due to customer feedback as well, which, if true, should translate to increased sales (in a way, the xA and old xB were too close to each other, size wise, so the new xD kind of replaces them both). Lots of features missing in the previous models that were heavily requested (cruise control for example) are now in both the new xB and the xD.
“Mr. Rush is saying that quality is no longer enough.
American consumers moved from domestic products to Toyotas for reliability. But if Toyota assumes that reliability alone can sustain the brand, they are making a dangerous mistake. We are an aspirational people. “Soulless appliances” are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style.
I see reason to believe that Toyota “gets it.”
Lexus’ new L-Finesse design language is coherent and not entirely unattractive. Scion unleased Bento box styling on U.S. buyers with success. The Tundra is getting there. And the new Camry, well, it tries to be different.
But I also see reason to believe Toyota is vulnerable on the design front.
The new xB’s gangsta look is wildly inauthentic. And while there is nothing wrong with any of their mainstream models’ design, they are bland. Respected, but perhaps not entirely loved.
In case you think this is just another enthusiasts looking for a hit of Ben and Jerry’s when everyone else is happy with generic vanilla, remember the role styling played in Detroit’s heyday. Surely that itch remains to be scratched.”
I just don’t see this. (I admit I could be wrong)
Basically the thesis is people bought soulless appliances for reliability, but really, they’d rather have style and something to meet their aspirations, and this is true despite the fact that they bought soulless appliances for their reliability. My take is that when people buy soulless appliances for reliability, reliability is at the top of the list.
I don’t know what you consider to be Detroit’s heyday, but I clearly remember people being sick to death of chrome and tailfins and guady tri-tone paint schemes.
There may have been a time when Americans had a love affair with the automobile, but those times are gone forever (except for the relatively small percentage of pistonheads). For most people a car is a pain in the butt. It’s a necessity, but we really don’t like them. They’re just tools we need to live our lives. The goal is to buy a car about as frequently as one buys a refridgerator, and to give it about an equal amount of thought during ownership.
Supposedly Toyota is considering offering a V6 in the new Corolla, which could end up being a classic big 3 type of decision. That is, if you’re going to make a sport model, just dump a big engine in there. The rest of the car doesn’t matter! It could end up being pretty neat, as I like the idea of a V6 powered small car, but Toyota doesn’t seem particularly committed to the sport crowd anymore, as evidenced by the squirrelly steering and handling of recent Corollas. The last generation of Celica is proof to me that they can make a great handling car, so what’s their excuse?
If they really have given up on people who like to drive, they ought to buy Mazda if Ford goes under. A little zoom-zoom could be good for the company.
By the way, if you hate how the current Camry looks, just wait until the new Corolla comes out. The Japanese model looks fine, but the version that we’re supposed to be getting looks like they tried to fuse the current Corolla with a new Camry. Keep an air sickness bag handy when you look at the new pics. Thank goodness we’re getting the Blade as a replacement for the Matrix, so you can get a tasteful looking hatchback version instead of the frankenstyled sedan.
Is Toyota the new GM? Maybe but it has unique problems all its own.
My first concern if I was running the Toyota circus? Can my dealer body adequately service my burgeoning customer fleet with current facilities and service departments? If not, do I risk losing customers based on lousy customer service?
Secondly, does my vehicle fleet’s resale value hold up as more product turns up on used lots? It’s all good as long as demand outstrips supply but as my government, commercial and rental fleet business expands…
Then. Whatever the relative merit of surveys like the JDP IQS are, here’s the thing: every manufacturer’s products are improving their quality, reliability and longevity. Will my brand’s centrepiece, quality become a “me-too” characteristic? What do I shift to in the future?
If sales do begin to stagnate and then slip, do I pour on the incentives? If so, what happens to the resale value my customers have grown to expect? As this market share game is a numbers game how much room do I have to fall? It took GM 40 years to p*** away half of its market share and it still has around 23-25%. I only have 16%, my grace period may not be quite as long.
Toyota and GM are very different companies and the challenges facing them are different. However, as we’ve seen with the domestics, fortunes can change very quickly once the right conditions are in place.
Local Toyota dealer: worst dealer in town. I’d say they have a ways to go on the customer service front. YMMV, as always, with local dealers.