Remember the small claims suit, brought by a Los Angeles woman against Honda? The suit that has lawyers that are allegedly fighting to get justice for their clients more worried than care companies? Gee, what if everybody goes to small claims, where, in many jurisdictions lawyers are verboten? The court has spoken, and awarded the woman close to the $10,000 that are the maximum in California. Now, the matter is in the hands of the lawyers again. (Read More…)

In 1992, the Ritz-Carlton chain won the Baldrige Quality Award for its excellence in customer service. Their idea was to write all customer preferences down, to feed them in a database and to henceforth deliver as expected.

Twenty years ago, I pointed this out to Volkswagen. I was VW’s customer service guru at the time and thought it was a swell idea. Volkswagen enthusiastically adopted the program. It was a failure, what do you expect from a company that retains me as a guru. Also, VW did not want to spend the money on a database. Instead, the Ritz-Carlton ended up running the hotel at Volkswagen’s Autostadt, and giving the occasional seminar to car dealers who still roll their eyes over the “gottverdammte Unsinn.”

Twenty years later, “Ford draws on luxury hotel experience for Lincoln overhaul,” writes Reuters, reporting that “in the plan to overhaul its luxury Lincoln brand, Ford Motor Co is embarking on a new approach, leaving behind the routine ideas of the auto industry and instead taking cues from the likes of high-end boutique hotels.”

Before that happens, Ford is reducing its dealer network to boutique size.  (Read More…)

The year begins with our analysts in utter disarray. Reality destroyed all projections, even the finely honed real-time forecasting models of TrueCar, Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book are left as smoking wrecks. In the end, familiar names won our January Grade The Analyst, but only because others finished much worse. (Read More…)

Toyota announced its consolidated (i.e. including Daihatsu and Hino) 2012 sales plan today. It causes intensive head-scratching at other automakers, especially in Wolfsburg. Toyota plans to raise its 2012 global sales by a whopping 21 percent to 9.6 million. (Read More…)

“In 1909, people shifted from the horse carriage to the automobile, and horses retired from the world of mobility. What happened to the horses? We still have horse races. People love horses. People support horses and horse racing. As long as car enthusiasts exist, motor sports will continue.”

Akio Toyoda, February 2, 2012, at the hachi-roku launch party

The 86 is not on sale yet, and people are already swapping engines. In a virtual way at least. In hachi-roku forums people are discussing the merits of more horsepower than the stock 200hp. They also wonder aloud how much additional power the hachi-roku can safely take. “Go for it,” says hachi-roku Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada: (Read More…)

Hachi-roku Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada credits his sons with giving him the impetus to develop this car. His sons are 24 and 27 now, they do not have a driver’s license and show no interest in cars. “They sit in front of the computer all day,” says Tada. “On Gran Turismo, they are better than their father. But they don`t want to drive.”

Tada tells how he took his boys to the racetracks since age 5 to awaken an interest in cars. It was a disaster, Tada admits:

“Manufacturers like to blame young people for having no interest in cars. Maybe we should blame ourselves. Manufacturers provided boring cars and focused on older people, because this is where the money is. We have abandoned young people.” (Read More…)

I already told you that today is not the official launch. Highly out of the ordinary at Toyota. Usually, when the members of the media are invited, the car goes on sale. Not in this case. In Japan, the car will be in dealers’ showrooms in April, I hear. Nonetheless, if I want one right away, I better hustle down to my neighborhood Toyota dealer and place an order now.

The car is made at Subaru’s Gunma Manufacturing Division, 1,000 per month. Currently, there are more than 3,000 pre-orders, I better take a number. “But when will the car arrive in the U.S.?“ is what you and I want to know. “Not decided yet,” is the official answer. (Read More…)

First of all, I thought I had already been to the launch party. Wrong. I thought I had driven the thing. Wrong. I learned today this was a pre-announcement-pre-party, and the cars I had seen were “production prototypes.” I see. Then, this splendiferous event with a rock band, canapés and apple juice must surely be the launch festa, I thought. (The dear reader knows by now that the average Toyota launch event in Japan entails a card table, two speakers, PowerPoint and a bottle of water.) Wrong again. It’s kind of a pre-announcement. The car itself will come in — we’ll talk about that when we talk timing.

However, I was told that today, that now we have real specs and prices, and the cars (which looked deceptively like the production prototypes) are the ones that will be sold. In Japan. As for America –– we’ll get to that. Here are the vital stats of the hachi-roku JDM spec: (Read More…)

I spent all day at the launch party of the Toyota FT/GT86/86/Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ  “new compact rear-wheel-drive sports car” at Makuhari Messe in Tokyo. Could have been Chiba already. I came back with so much information about Toyota’s new “honest sportscar” (as Akio Toyoda likes to call it) that I declare today Hachi-Roku Thursday. (Read More…)

Kelley Blue Book was right when, a week ago, it predicted that 900,000 cars would be sold in January. It was 913,284, up 11 percent over January 2011. The SAAR, or seasonally adjusted average rate (= if the rest of the year would be as good as January, how much for the year?) climbed to 14.2 million. (Read More…)

Today, Chrysler reported its first yearly profit since 1997. It was $183 million net profit on $55 billion net revenue. Not earth shattering as car companies go, but a start: Chrysler wants to turn this into $1.5 billion of net profit in 2012 and $65 billion of revenue. At the same time, Fiat-Chrysler cut its 2012 revenue target to 75 billion, due to a slowing demand for cars in a weakening European economy. Fiat will not pay a dividend for ordinary shares in 2011. (Read More…)

Chinese blame their notoriously jam-packed streets on all kinds of things, preferably on government-types driving around needlessly in their government-issued cars. This time, it’s different. This traffic jam is caused by young couples who rush to the altar the municipal government building for their nuptials. Why the sudden run on weddings? (Read More…)

In the olden days, you banged your girl, and then got married. In China, as modern as it may be, the big bang is after the wedding ceremony. No Chinese wedding is complete without WWIII – worthy fireworks. The delivery vehicles for the marriage-megatonnage are purpose-converted ‘salute cars.’ As Tycho of Carnewschina tells us, the salute cars “are mostly based on old Beijing-Jeeps, dressed in military style with a big and scary rocket launcher in the back.” (Read More…)

When I called Toyota’s new Aqua / Prius C affordable compact hybrid first a “gamechanger”, then an “engineering feat,” this attracted the attention of self-styled jargon vigilantes. They demanded equal platitudes to be bestowed on domestic models. In the meantime, the Japanese game changer threatens to change Toyota’s best laid plans: It sells ten times better than expected. (Read More…)