First you complain because somebody uses the word "basement blogger" and now this.

If I warned you to stop eating so much junk food or else you were going to die early, and 3 years later you were shot and killed by an armed robber, was I really proven right?

I still haven't seen any evidence that Toyota is imploding from anything other than the general state of the economy. By default any large manufacturer that depends on economies of scale is going to suffer more in an economic downturn.

Do you really believe that Toyota would be losing money if the Dow were still at 14,xxx and we were seeing steady economic growth?

 

And a voice of reason finally enters this thread.

I love how irrational this current environment has made people. Then again, I get called names on here too because I'm not dancing in the streets anytime anything bad comes out about Toyota or Honda or any other non-"domestic" company.

. . . grasping for straws people, grasping for straws.

 

CARB is hardly the reason the US market has shrunk from 17 million units a year to 9 million. If they got rid of CARB in 2007 we would still be were we are today

No you have shown to save the dancing for GM bad news.

 

Keep bringing the weak sauce buddy.

 

Just a thought but...

I'm pretty sure that anybody that made a vehicle a hybrid for the purpose of improving performance is an idiot.

 

He simply said that abolishing CARB would save the taxpayer millions, not what you said.

Plus CARB sucks the big one and should be killed.

 

I think what you are going to see here is Toyota, and Honda, and Nissan, and all the rest of the transplants saying that they are not profitable in North America.
They're probably a little upset that the gap between the costs of their cars and the costs of the Big 3 cars have just been narrowed.
They really enjoyed their cost advantage.
So now they'll lower their costs (read: lower wages) to recoup that advantage. And that will put the Big 3 in the same place as they were before the crisis hit. And then the Big 3 will need another "once in a century" restructuring.

Do you see a cycle here?

 

I think the article is misleading.

Yes, Toyota is not profitable given their sales dropped by 38%. BUT their president did say that they hope to be profitable next year after they make the necessary adjustments to their operations.

Toyota is not dead yet in North America.

 

Not to be an ***, but does anyone think our economy couldve sustained that rate of over inflated growth?

 

It's easy to play armchair quarterback after the fact. I think most people realized it wasn't going to continue going like it was forever, but most people didn't think it'd end up with such a severe crash. Evidence of that can be found by watching pretty much any financial news in the months leading up to and even leading into the crash. Very few people were 'calling' the crash... most were just calling another buying opportunity, and the ones who were calling for doomsday were usually the same wolf cryers who had been crying for the last decade that a crash was about to happen.

 

I heard not to long ago that Honda was still squeaking out a small profit.

 

I don't know if Toyota was assuming sustained growth. More likely they were expanding production because they thought one or more of the Big Three competition would be eliminated.

 

Interesting point, although if Toyota lowered wages too much I'm sure they would run into labor problems of their own. Setting the bar is a lot easier than lowering it after the fact.

 

They won't lower total compensation a lot, but they will lower it. And they will probably close a plant or 2 here in the U.S.
Then they'll magically be profitable again. All at the expense of the American worker.

I just think they're using "we're not profitable in North America" as an excuse to cut people, cut compensation, and close plants.

 

What are they supposed to do; keep plants open or build more vehicles than the market needs because otherwise it hurts American workers? Companies don't exist to provide jobs or to pay more than the job is worth in the marketplace.

As to anyone thinking Toyoda is in "serious" trouble they need to think again. Even with its losses; Toyota is one of the financially strongest auto companies on the planet and there is nothing wrong at Toyota in the states that minor adjustments won't cure. If we ever get back to a more normal TVM they will have no trouble recovering anything they've currently lost.