Toyota And Europe: An Unrequited Love

Despite what you think of Toyota, it’s a company you should respect. They brought reliability to cars when others couldn’t. They popularised lean manufacturing techniques that others are still trying to copy. And they introduced green technologies at a time when petrol was cheap and still made a success of it. In short, when Toyota put their mind to it, they can make a good success of just about anything… except for the European market. For some reason, Toyota cannot make in-roads in the European sales no matter how hard they try, and the latest set of data suggests that that trend is continuing.

Just-auto.com reports that in Toyota’s European division’s sales for 2009, Toyota branded vehicles dropped 20%, year on year, while Lexus branded vehicles dropped 40%. Over all of their plants in Europe (France, The Czech Republic, Turkey, Poland and the United Kingdom) production fell 26% on cars, 34% on engines and 5% on transmissions. The only bright spots (and I use that term in its broadest definition) were the Toyota Yaris (built in France) which dropped “only” 10% and the Toyota Prius which grew 3%. The head of the European division was trying to stay optimistic. “Looking forward to 2010, we expect a more predictable market in Europe, with an industry slightly below this year’s level”, said Toyota Motor Europe president and CEO Tadashi Arashima. “However, we predict a positive development of our market share. We saw clear signs for this upward trend already in the fourth quarter of 2009 when we started to benefit from our renewed model line-up, especially in the private car market. Furthermore, enhanced product offers in the important mainstream and premium C-segments will support our sales in the coming years, with the introduction of the Europe-built Auris HSD and a brand new Lexus hybrid model, two industry firsts in these strategic segments.”

Toyota are putting a lot of emphasis on hybrid technology to come to their rescue. However, don’t forget that diesel is also big in Europe and with Volkswagen pushing their Bluemotion cars, Daimler with BlueTec and Ford’s Econetic range; not to mention Nissan’s Leaf and Renault’s electric fleet, Toyota better prepare itself for war. With 2 competitors who shouldn’t be there (Vauxhall/Opel and Chrysler) every piece of the pie is that much more valuable.