Toyota: About Those New Stories You've Been Hearing…

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

If there’s one certainty in the car business, it’s that you know a company is in trouble when their ads forgo showing off their latest models in favor of gauzy images of beloved products past. It’s a trick that the Detroit firms have played to death over their 30 years of decline, and now Toyota is dipping a toe in the soothing waters of nostalgia. For contrast, check out Hyundai’s “more-Toyota-than-Toyota” Super Bowl spot after the jump.


Incidentally, Toyota is credited with first introducing the then-innovative practice of allowing any line worker to identify defects, stop the line and formulate fixes. The model has since been adopted across the industry, and has gone a long way towards reducing the quality gap between Toyota and its competitors. By keeping a Toyota-like laser-focus on product while the big T is mired in feel-good attempts at restoring lost credibility, Hyundai shows that it has stolen more than one page from Toyota’s Detroit-killer strategy.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Brian E Brian E on Feb 08, 2010

    This is probably a bit late for this comment thread, but I'll chime in anyway. The problem with that Toyota commercial is that it told me how they aren't living up to my expectations and how my confidence in Toyota has (evidently) been shattered such that it needs restoring. Well, OK then. Toyota, you haven't been living up to my expectations and my confidence is shattered. Thanks for telling me that; now I know better than to buy one.

  • Blue adidas Blue adidas on Feb 08, 2010

    They got caught. It's that simple. Their cars are ugly and now everyone knows they are junk.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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