 |
Toyota ReviewsToyota Motor Co., the world’s largest automaker, has been producing cars for more than 70 years. It wasn’t until after World War II, however, that production started to pick up. Toyota went from making 8,500 cars a year in 1955 to 600,000 in 1965. Models like the Toyopet and Land Cruiser hit the United States in 1957. Today Toyota is among the leaders when it comes to hybrid technology. |
Hyundai, which has a flourishing and fast-growing joint venture with Beijing’s BAIC, is jumping on the bandwagon of fake Chinese brands. Probably not on Hyundai’s own volition, and probably with a lot of gentle urging by the Chinese government which thinks that the answer to China’s cluttered market is brands, brands, and more brands.
Carnewschina has it that the new brand of the Hyundai/BAIC JV will be called “Shouwang.” Read More >
If you are one of those who are itching to buy a new car after years of economy-induced withdrawal, one of the many questions that may run through your mind is the exit strategy from that shiny new car. In other words: How well will the car hold its value? If you want the executive summary: Buy just about any Toyota, Lexus, or the 2012 Jeep Wrangler.
If you need more detail, hit the jump. Read More >
The pent-up demand has been chased-after more than Richard Kimble. And like the good doctor, the pent-up demand has so far eluded its pursuers. Now, Joe Pent-Up appears to be surrounded, further resistance is futile. Reuters has it from J.D. Power that:
“U.S. auto sales may have their strongest month of 2011 in November, spurred by consumers’ growing need to replace aging cars and trucks and a wider selection on dealer lots.” Read More >
As an amateur student of automotive advertising, I’m fascinated by this ad for the Prius V. It starts off reasonably, showing all the enormous things that will fit inside the new, larger Prius… but since the client always wants his product in the shot for the maximum amount of airtime, the visuals have to be twisted to put the Prius V inside the things which fit inside a Prius V. In the memetically-omnipresent words of Xzibit… sup dawg, we heard you like Priuses, so we put a Prius inside your Prius so you can drive a Prius while you hold a party inside an amp inside a Prius.
The red guitar amplifier featured throughout the ad is a Dr. Z Maz 18, which sells for about $1,700. (Nope, I don’t have one; I filled the “18-watt” spot in my home performance space with a Phil X Evil Robot.) The Maz 18 is an awfully hip piece of equipment and carries a lot of credibility among the twentysomething set. With that in mind, I went out to see what people on the Internet thought of the ad. Excerpts and an interesting photo after the jump.
After getting the car to run 13s in the quarter-mile with the new engine, I found myself— at age 33— in a sort of “what am I doing with my life?” period of agonizing reappraisal. Ten years of the Impala Hell Project absorbing most of my creative horsepower, and what had I really accomplished with all that work? Read More >
If you want to start a business in China, you need a business license. Getting a license to make cars used to be quite hard, but the Chinese government wants to make it harder. China’s industry ministry will hand down standardized rules, which may limit new entrants, Bloomberg reports.
The not yet precisely defined rules don’t sound sinister at first glance. They state that new car companies must meet certain criteria including scale of production and development capacity. They will take effect on January 1, a statement on the ministry website says. Read More >
Both Akio Toyoda and Carlos Ghosn are in the U.S. and what are they doing here? They complain loudly about the high yen. Akio Toyoda uses an interesting reasoning. It may make Americans wish for an even higher yen. Toyota may shift a “significant” amount of production to the U.S., if the yen stays high, and if demand in Japan will fail to consume Toyota’s vast capacity there. If the majority of Toyota’s output is shipped overseas, then factories will follow.
“If demand in Japan recovers, we will continue and work to maintain production of 3 million units” in Japan, Akio Toyoda said to Bloomberg. “If most of it becomes exports, shifting a significant amount of production to the U.S. may be considered.” Read More >
A hooptie is a once-semi-luxurious car that’s depreciated down to just-above-scrap value and is getting its final owner some quality, low-buck miles before being crushed. The Buick Electra 225 was the archetypal hooptie of the 1980s and 1990s, but how about today? More importantly, which current models will be the hoopties of 2025? Read More >
Toyota steadfastly refuses to refer to its upcoming new compact rear-wheel-drive sports car as anything else than a “new compact rear-wheel-drive sports car.” But Toyota sure knows how to whip up more excitement (if that is possible) before the pocket racer will be officially unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. While websites around the globe publish every scrap of paper or digits they can lay their hands on, Toyota will paint you a picture. Read More >
Over the last few days we’ve been discussing the implications of the growing gap between global oil demand and production, looking at the responses of a global automaker, a radical startup and the oil industry itself. And make no mistake, it’s an uncertain future out there… unless you’re selling cars in the US. In that case, your future just arrived, planned all the way through 2025. That is, if you think this proposed rule will survive four presidential elections and one industry-government “mid-term review.” Want to familiarize yourself with this pre-planned fuel economy future? All 893 pages await your perusal, in PDF format here. Or, hit the jump for a few broad strokes.
The Japanese car market is anything but closed, Toshiyuki Shiga, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said yesterday. Vis-a-vis The Nikkei [sub], Shiga basically repeated what we had said all along, and he used the same line of reasoning that doesn’t seem to register with some blockheaded parties:
“Import duties are zero, and there are no regulations or procedures that block American cars. European vehicle imports are increasing.”
Shiga should know. He is COO of Nissan, which quietly turned into Japan’s largest car importer on a brand basis for the year, only to fall back to number 2 in October on strong imports of the Volkswagen Group. Shiga also asked the same question which I always use, usually without receiving an answer: Read More >
Over the last couple of weeks we traveled in space through Colombia, China and South Korea, and in time through the USA in 1975. This week we are getting icy and hop onto Sweden.
If you are not in for a snowstorm, you are going to struggle through this article I’m afraid! But hey, I’ve also prepared 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, and I can tell you it is super good, so click away!
Volvo is still the king of Swedish roads, placing 4 models in the Top 8 last month, while there was no Saab model in the Top 50…
They do want advice though; which is tricky for the B&B. While auto enthusiasts like us seek the Coltranes and Metallicas of vehicular enjoyment. They prefer… well… Jimmy Buffett. A well executed car that makes them feel comfortable, has a touch of ‘fun’ at times (the non-enthusiast types of fun), and can go about the transport business for a good decade and change with the same tune and minimal fuss.
They want Maragaritaville without the DUI.
All the convertibles in the $40,000 to $60,000 range seek to attract this mainstream audience. Can the Lexus IS250c do it better? And if so, at what price?
Since ruling Americas roads in the heyday of the US auto industry, sales of large sedans (as a percentage of the overall market) have been in a decades-long slump. More recently, as SUVs have merged with large cars to form the modern crossover, the decline in large car sales has picked up speed. And there’s reason to expect that trend to continue, as a closer look at the data shows that market support for large sedans has eroded farther than even these numbers might suggest. One of TTAC’s well-placed sources reveals that the “large car” segment (admittedly, a notoriously difficult segment to accurately capture) is running at 50% fleet sales, year-to-date through October. That’s right, every second large sedan sold in this country end up as a fleet vehicle, many of them daily rentals.
The big news around here yesterday came from Bertel’s interview with Toyota’s Chief Engineer, in which it became clear that Toyota takes the developing world’s growing demand for oil very seriously. With global demand already outstripping supply, the giant automaker’s embrace of a petroleum-constrained business model seems to make it clear that gas prices will play a significant role in the future. But markets are, by their natures, both difficult to predict, and shaped by predictions. And Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl reckons that, although gas prices are high and could well go up in the short term, fears of a runaway gap between supply and demand may not materialize over the longer term. He writes:
Here’s the twist: As I said, the consensus belief (or story) on future oil prices is that they will be higher. And short term, this may be the case if and/or when the global economy recovers and/or demand grows in emerging markets.
But there is a longer-term story as well. This story suggests that peak oil may be nigh and the future holds shortages and sharply higher prices. Buying into this story, companies, acting individually, will see profit in expanding exploration, developing sophisticated new extraction technologies, etc.
The aggregate result of all these individual activities is that the future supply of oil will improve and prices will actually drop.
In fact, we have seen this paradox play out before. Through the Seventies, we were first shocked by rapid price increases and then conditioned to believe they would continue. And, of course, oil prices collapsed in the Eighties.
Recent Comments