Toyota in for tough times? Sorry I don’t see it. Toyota is making a concerned effort to improve quality across the board. I guess you also missed the fact that Toyota has lowered prices in Canada on a bunch of Toyota and Lexus models, with some of the price drops being very significant.

Toyota had a bit of a rough January, but a lot of other automakers including BMW had a horrible January. GM’s sales were up but that is widely believed to be due to increased fleet sales as well as increased incentives compared to last January.

While you can’t think of a reason to buy a Corolla or Camry over a Honda competitor, a lot of people can. How else would you explain the fact that the new Accord saw sales drop in January while Camry sales remained solid? Or how about the fact that Corolla sales were still strong in January even though the old model is being phased out?

Frankly, I couldn’t think of a single to reason to buy a Corolla or Camry over the Honda counterpart. The tC is outclassed by the Civic two-door in almost every single important category (price, performance, mileage, etc).

Of course Honda sales dipped slightly last month as well. My point being, people will wake up in a year or so and realize they’re paying more for less with Toyota. They might fall farther than they expect.

Now, Scion is in trouble. The xD is doing even worse than the poor selling xA (the price went up (although it has more standard features and more power) and some people have problems with the interior). It looks like their gamble on enlarging the xB failed (as predicted here). And the tC is aging. But Scion is gravy; it’s not their core business. Their core business is doing fine.

How did this article about a Toyota exec admitting times are tough somehow turn instantly into a rip job on Hyundai?

The objective evidence is 180 degrees removed from your claims that Hyundai should suffer because of “poor reliability.” Instead, they’ve shot up to third in the 31-maker industry in one major reliability survey, flying past Nissan and a host of other venerable makes. New models like the Veracruz, reworked ‘09 Sonata and the upcoming Genesis are drawing universal praise.

Do they still have problems with disorganized management and the dealer body? Absolutely. Is there any reason to believe they will somehow become more a focus of consumer discontent than, say, Chryslerberus? I sure don’t see it. Did you pick their name out of a hat or something?

This is very serious. The economy is grinding to a smashing halt, now that the banks have been found out to be playing around with monopoly money (they thought.)