Saw this on another forum. Ford giving up the #2 spot was a surprise 2 years ago, but Toyota's aggressive market gains are pretty much expected now and with the way things have gone for GM this year, it wouldn't be much of a surprise.

It seems like they plan to do so by 2008....only 2 model years (or less than 3 calender years) away though. I guess the last 20 years of mediocre cars (not trucks/Suv's) and sub-par quality have finally caught up with the domestic giants. They shouldn't have waited till the 2000's to finally close the quality gap, because public perception still weighs heavily against the domestics.

About the only thing that the domestics have a stronghold on now is the domestic U.S market, but even that's sliding from their grasps with every passing year.

 

I have no doubt they will, but not by 2008, I'm thinking 2010/2011

 

2010 was the year i had in mind as well, but if Toyota ends up meeting that 9.7 million units globally by 2008, they will easily be #1. They seem to think 9.7mill in 2008 is doable. Quite a gain if they hit their projection, that's for sure.

 

i'd say by the end of this year

 

I wouldn't be surprised if they did it by 08'.............yup.......not surprised at all....:blah:

 

I'm pretty sure they will do it in 2 yrs. Not so much due to Toyotal making up the whole margin but you have to assume GM's going to give them a lower target to shoot for in the next 24 months as it sqeezes down unprofitable excesses.

 

Here is my opinion, take it for what it's worth. Just as America lost to Japan in consumer electronics it will lose to Japan in automobiles also. It's just a matter of time.

 

Couldn't have put it better.

And for the best damn country in the world, that's a shame. We should be leaders on every front, not followers. Especially in the technology segment (electronics, automobiles, etc...).

 

We are the leader in defense technology. I don't think that will EVER CHANGE.

 

You can't expect us to be number 1 in anything when we keeping pumping out educated idiots into the market.

Look at the Japanese school system and how they are raised. Then look at ours = failure!

sad...

 

You sure about that?

 

That is changing pretty quick for the Japanese. A lot of their society is restructuring and in another 15-30 years it will be very interesting to see what happens with their ability to produce high quality products.

 

We can't lead in everything, we don't have unlimited resources to do that. We still lead in more stuff than anybody else does. By giving up the lead in unimportant stuff like VCRs it frees up resources to be the leader in other more important things like Information Technology, medicine and medical devices, etc. etc.

 

.....as more and more IT work gets outscourced to India?

It has been proven over history that pretty much every great Empire falls. If America ever suffers a similar fate, this is why. We pretty much can't seem to do anything for ourselves anymore. We're a nation of gorging consumers who are not willing to put our money back into the creation and manufacturing of our products. We'd rather just let someone else do it because it saves a few pennies on the dollar. Well, sooner or later when everything is done overseas we'll look around and wonder why America isn't nearly as strong as it was in the 20th century.

End of philisophical rant.

 

You pretty much nailed it on the head.