http://www.detnews.com/2003/autosins...a01-262408.htm

 

unless GM can stem the tide, pretty soon it will be just the big 1; Toyota. They have had their eyes on world domination for some time now, and it's only strengthening their grip with this NASCAR stunt coming up...

honestly, how laughable/pathetic/scary is the fact that toyota is willing to reverse engineer a carbureted, OHV small-block, just so they can sell more cars to the nascar crowd?

 

I think its pertty scary cause Toyota has the knowhow and resources to make to happen.. and dominate!

 

They tried it last year in the NHRA with a funny car Celica, Most people hated it, the driver is a cursed man, and it no longer exists. I hope NASCAR fans sun it like the NHRA guys did with the funny car.

 

I think the nascar thing will be a failure too. That is not exactly Toyota friendly territory.

I will have to say that Toyota will not take the top spot. They have gained while the real "Big 3" have been sleeping and now that they are waking up, things will change and I think the *** market share will slide.

 

THe only thing toyota is doing right is good quality, other than that the only thing they lead in is making boring cars.

Maybe Toyota will make a 2+2 RWD V8 coupe for $25,000

 

And toyoyta has the most amount of free $$ to play around with..

alot of NASCAR teams are worried because Toyota will be spending mad amounts of $$$ into their NASCAR truck team, which is going to force everyone to spend more $$$ to become competative..


heh, I dont' think GM makes a RWD V8 2+2 coupe for $25k.

 

No but they did a year ago

 

Scary indeed, even in the age of 0% financing and heavy rebates on domestic brands they still lost ground and cash to the foreign competitors. What will happen when times change and the domestics can't continue to have rebates...

 

I agree. The real big 3 have some exciting CARS coming soon.

 

Maybe Bob Eaton wasn't a dummy after all, regarding the Diamler/Chrysler "merger".

Chrysler is bleeding red ink profusely...that the parent company in Germany....is absorbing.

I wonder if Chrysler would even be around whithout the "merger"?

I also wonder if it's German masters will ever want to spin it off and cut their losses.

 

Toyota is on the rise. Things tend to go your way when you make quality cars and have an excellent loyal customer base (both of which Toyota has). I don't think they'll be giving up any market share anytime soon.

Domestics on the other hand do have some good cars coming out in the near future. With the big 3's quality going up, and the gap between them and the japs closing, they might have a good chance of regaining lost market share.

I don't wish them failure, and i don't blame them for trying to get to the next level. I blame GM, Ford, and Chrysler for their own troubles. You have to screw up big time to lose huge chunks of your market share to smaller foreign competitors.

 

And don't forget about the dealer networks, too...my mom finally bought a toyota 4runner, and whenever I took it in for service, the whole experience is much better and more efficient than when i went to chevy/chrysler dealers in the past.

Product notwithstanding, if GM customer service and dealerships were as good as their japanese counterparts, that ALONE would mean 5 percentage points of market share...

 

Hello everybody, I'm new in here and this post actually kinda inspired me to jump in. First off, having both built a "certain Japanese car" at one point, (Northern Kentucky..I ain't saying the brand cause they have sued for less...no joke) and sold Volvo's (great cars to drive, if somewhat quirky when new reliability wise) for a dealership that also sold that "certain Japanese car" (right next door) I have some experience with both the car and the service provided.
First off, yes.....service of that Japanese car is, from a no fuss standpoint, better than that of the "average" domestic dealership IMO. I don't believe for a second that the techs are better trained overall, but the experience is "friendlier". Especially when you compare that Japanese companies' luxury division to say...Caddy or Lincoln. Apples and oranges. Unfortunately, the same can be said, for the most part, about Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, etc. when compared to Caddy and Lincoln. There are obviously always going to be exceptions to the rule, but the Japnese company does do a great job with providing "friendly" service. Overall however, I wouldn't write too many "letters of recommendation" about the Japanese Car Companies service I witnessed.
On more than one occasion I saw, with my own two eyes in the flesh, a tech or service manager explain what was "wrong" with the customers newer Jaonese car. More often than not, the customer was informed that what happened was "their fault" because they had ..(insert ridiculous reason here). And the customer virtually always bought it. The techs would die laughing later...it was a total load!
Now, as far as money goes this is not an issue since if the car is broke you gotta fix it. But, what I noticed was a whoooole lot of customers who, upon discovering how THEY had broken their Jaonaese car would simply say their car had been "problem free" since if they hadn't broken it things would have been fine.
Folks this was not that uncommon. I will use this time to mention that from what I saw when building those Japanese cars I do not feel that their quality is superior in any way to domestic cars......especially pre Nasser Fords and Fords since 2001. As a matter of fact I recall once while working for the Japanese company during one quarter in the late ninties(I do not recall which one) their luxury divison led a recall category. Leading a recall category is not where you want to be guys.
Do I think a lot of folks have a "better experience" with import cars? Yes, but not because of the cars. When I sold those Volvo's, the difference between how a person would treat a domestic car compared to an import, even a lower market one, was amazing.
Example, I took in, on trade, a Buick Park Ave. once, about mid ninties, that had around a buck and a half in mileage. I am still not certain wether or not the owner realized that oil is something you are expected to change. It looked like pitch in the engine....no joke. The tech who serviced the car said that there was no way he had ever changed tranny fluid, flushed the radiator...ANYTHING but change the oil (and as I said he didn't exactly do this often)....this in 150,000 miles. The car looked as bad as you would expect, but ran like a top.
I would love to say the above is the exception, but with domestic cars, it was closer to the rule for the average owner. Now for some reason when people got an import car (And I mean the standrad Japanese brands.) the story was different. "Well, I make sure I change the oil every 3000 miles or less, and it has to be at least a synthetic blend. I had the tranny flushed at 50,000 even though the book says wait til 65,000. Well, I did have to have a head replaced at 75,000 miles but it WAS my fault."
Now to be fair, most of those import owners had no problems with their cars, but what do you expect...they maintained them! But, there was no significant difference between how much trouble these folks had with their cars compared to the domestics as far as I could tell. But, for some reason the domestic drivers always felt as though at 100,000 a U.S. brand auto is on "borrowed time"..Why? I don't think honest numbers prove this at all.
Don't shoot me for my Fords, but my T-Bird Turbo coupe has a very hard 198,000 miles on it (I did lose a turbo, but they are only supposed to go about 120,000 if you treat them great). My dad's Taurus is sneaking up on 300,000, and my mom's Catera is right at 100,000 and runs, drives, and feels like a new car. Why? We take care of our cars. Some cars are more problematic than others of course, but the Japanese are going to have this too.
And, I will say, without naming the dealer I worked for, that it is very large indeed and draws service customers from literally hundreds of miles...a lot of them. There customer satisfaction numbers are out the roof, or were at the time I was there, and I can't imagine they are anything but typical.

 

One can easily spin this the other way and ask if Chrysler is doing badly only because the Germans mungled things up pretty badly when taking control, such as killing off most of the new products in the pipeline back in '01 when things were going so badly (there's a good response to poor sales - delay new introduction of new product ).

As far as Toyota's fortunes go, it's not hard to figure out why they're doing well - they've been selling excellent cars for 20+ years. I know that the gap is closing quickly and many folks want to know why the Japanese still have such an outstanding reputation compared to the domestics, but the truth is that it takes a long time to build up a name. Honda and Toyota weren't overnight successes, people.

With regards to dealer service, I've noticed a huge improvement in GM's service departments in the last 3-4 years. In fact, based on my experiences and those of close friends, I'd rather visit the local Mr. Goodwrench than his Honda counterpart - no joke. I don't know if this is a national trend or just something local.