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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. |
Toyota says it will suspend production at its assembly plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Ontario, Canada, along with an engine factory in West Virginia to cope with a shortage of parts, caused by flooding in Thailand. The parts shortage is beginning to affect global operations. Read More >
David writes:
Hi Sajeev,
My family of 5 (1 spouse, 2 four year olds, 1 2 year old) shares 3 cars. A 2003 Passat Wagon, purchased used with 30,000 miles is our primary family car. It gets good mileage (33 mpg on the highway!), fits three kids seats across the back row, and carries a ton of luggage (more than many SUV’s). It handles reasonably well and has good driving dynamics and comfort (and a tight turning radius). Our second car is a 1996 Honda Civic two door hatch, which gets great mileage, was purchased with 8000 miles on it, and was recently declared a rolling hazard with the head gasket ready to fail at any moment. It gets driven 10-15 miles a week at speeds below 35 mph. Our third vehicle serves the dual purpose of track/date car, a 1995 BMW M3 Lightweight, purchased with 60,000 miles on the clock. These three cars have been more than adequate for our family’s needs for 5 years. Until now. We need something that carries 7.
There are days when I wish industry analysts and auto industry journalists should be required to carry maltreatment insurance. This is one of those days. Bloomberg reports that “Volkswagen AG will probably become the world’s biggest carmaker this year, vaulting past Toyota Motor and General Motors on gains in emerging markets.” Pure and unadulterated nonsense. Read More >
(Before you start reading you need to play the video above – just for the music)
Over the last few weeks we have visited Cambodia, Panama, Colombia and China. Not quite sure why there is so many countries starting in C in that list… which is partly why we are now off to Indonesia.
You’ve been to Bali recently and can’t bear to hear any more about it? That’s fine, I’ve prepared 159 other countries for you to visit in my blog, and I can tell you it is sangat baik (very good), so click away!
Toyota is experimenting a little bit in Indonesia, including releasing twin models quasi-exclusively to this country under its Daihatsu brand…
We’ve reviewed a lot of Korean designs here lately. The Soul. The Rio. The Veloster. The Sorrento. The Genesis. The Optima Hybrid. The Cayenne S. Actually, rumors that Porsche made a straight-up trade of engineering (the original Hyundai Santa Fe’s 2.7L V-6) for styling (the original Cayenne is clearly pretty much the same as said original Santa Fe) are completely unfounded. Some of these cars may not be quite up to the standard of their competition, but others are either the critic’s choice of the segment or the actual freaking segment sales volume leader.
Price has been a big part — for a long time, maybe the only part — of Korean-brand appeal in the United States since the very first Excel arrived with “$4995!” plastered on the windshield. In 2011, however, the Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo vehicles aren’t always the cheapest choice. Which leads us to the question:
“You know,” editor Ed told me, “that would be, about, like, a Take Four on the Soul, we’re not gonna do that.” I’d rented a 2011-vintage Kia Soul for a LeMons race in Houston and had been quite impressed. Although the powertrain (the traditional two-liter Hyundai/Kia four-banger and a lackluster four-speed auto) hadn’t been stellar, the rest of the car was just awfully useful and pleasant besides. Nevertheless, Ed wouldn’t let me review the thing. Oh well. If you want to know what we thought about the Soul, collectively speaking, (zing) you can read Ed’s 2010 Sport review and Frank Williams’ Take Two.
To ensure that I would have a chance to talk about this very interesting little car, however, Kia went through the trouble of thoroughly revising the Soul just a few months after my initial drive… and they were kind enough to have just one six-speed manual version available during the press introduction. I snagged said manual-transmission Soul with ferocity and am ready to convey all the details to you. For those of you too diffident to click the jump, here’s the sum-up: Great car, shot in the foot at its launch by a rather unfortunate decision on Kia’s part…
Toyota is the last of several other major manufacturers to open an R&D center in China. The company held a cornerstone-laying ceremony last Saturday in the Southeast Economic Development Zone in Changshu, China. The city is not far from Shanghai, close to many other manufacturers. Read More >
One of the earliest iterations of the “Low Speed Vehicle Today, World EV Domination Tomorrow” business model to emerge at the dawn of the electric car era was ZAP. But after being exposed on numerous occasions for its poor product quality, vaporware hype and stock manipulation (most infamously in this Wired story), ZAP disappeared from the EV scene in the US (the company’s official (read: sanitized) history can be found here). Last we heard, ZAP was hyping a venture with the Korean optics firm Samyang, but it seems the firm has spending the last year or so putting down roots in the Chinese market. Having merged with Jonway, the Chinese maker of scooters, ATVs and a CUV that looks suspiciously like the Toyota RAV4, ZAP came back to the US for the Automotive X-Prize, which it contested in a ZAP Alias, the three-wheeled, $38k vehicle that has not been produced in volume although the company is still accepting deposits for it. The Alias failed to finish in the X-Prize, but ZAP says that revenue from Jonway is funding the vehicle’s continued development (including a four-wheeled version)… which was supposed to debut way back in 2009.
Now Consumer Reports says the firm is focusing on selling electric RAV4 knockoffs produced by Jonway as it continues to work on the Alias. But the firm seems to have burnt too many bridges in the US, as it says it will focus on selling the EVs in China and other world markets… despite the fact that developing market EV sales are going nowhere. But ZAP has left something of a legacy in the US: Senator Mitch McConnell, a critic of government loans for Solyndra, apparently pushed for a quarter-billion dollar federal loan to ZAP, opening him to charges of hypocrisy. Now, as ever, ZAP remains a fascinating fixture at the margins of the EV scene. And though it’s an interesting company to watch, it’s best when viewed from a safe distance…
After dogged reporting, ABC’s investigative unit, headed by Brian Ross of dubious Toyota fame, found out the shocking news that Fisker received a $529 million federal, and now the unpatricotic SOB has the Fisker Karmas built in Finland. ABC is shocked, I say shocked: Read More >
We take issues of censorship and media freedom very seriously here at TTAC. Well, I’ve been told that Bertel and Ed do, anyway. Long-time readers will recall the little tempest-in-teapot earlier this year when Detroit News editor Scott Burgess threw his pacifier out of his crib over a Chrysler 200 review and then returned to employment with the paper shortly afterwards. Many Bothans died to bring you this information, if by “Bothans” you mean “Jalopnik readers” and by “died” you mean “were bored to death by self-righteous editorials regarding”.
A TTAC reader recently pointed me to an editorial by Mr. Burgess entitled “Cruze across Europe: Loved overseas, Chevy’s efficient diesel coming to the States”. I was intrigued by this article. While it appeared at first glance to be a shameless puff piece that combined a European vacation for the hard-working Mr. Burgess (and his wife) with a vaguely-defined test loop for the diesel Cruze, I quickly realized that it was a very subversive piece. The first clue was the title. “Loved overseas?” Wink, wink, Mr. B. I see what you did there. And sentences like “Really, the Cruze should receive a hero’s welcome in America” are simply begging to be revealed for the subtle jabs that they are.
With this in mind, I decided to check a few more Burgess articles to find out what he was managing to slip past those bastards at the Detroit News. This tale of defiance and inner strength reminds me of the Dalai Lama, or that Gandhi fellow, or… I know! Oh yes. But instead of V For Vendetta, we’ll call it F For Freecar.
Demographics, marketing, and public perception don’t play nicely together very often. Consider, if you will, the oft-repeated factoid that the GMC Yukon Denali customer base is better-educated and earns more income, on the average, that the equivalent Cadillac Escalade customer. The same was reportedly true for the previous generations of the Toyota Land Cruiser and Lexus LS400, respectively. People who are habituated to weath and success tend to be remarkably resistant to lifestyle marketing, celebrity tie-ins, and marble tiles on showroom floors.
The rather handsome little five-door you see above is, of course, a Lexus CT200h, which is more or less a Lexus Prius. There is a sported-up version of the CT200h, called the “CT200h F Sport”, and there is a sported-up version of that, yclept “CT200h F Sport Special Edition”, or “CTFSSE” for short. It rings the cash register for $37,995, and represents the very apex of Lexus compact hybrid ownership. It’s also $1,530 cheaper than the apex of Toyota compact hybrid ownership, the Prius Plug-In Advanced, which costs $39,525.
Which brand — Toyota, Lexus, or Prius — is the real premier entry into this market?
Recent Toyota ads introducing the “Prius Family” have featured the Prius C Concept to represent the forthcoming compact Prius, which will bear only the most passing resemblance to the slick showcar. But if deception was Toyota’s game, the jig is up. Der Prius wird geschrumpft (shrunk), chortles Autobild, which says these images come from a Japanese brochure that was leaked to the web. And the car pictured does look far more production-Toyota-like than the decidedly Scionesque C Concept. Is it the real thing? Will ad-attentive Toyota fans wonder where the C Concept went? Will a compact hybrid sell well in any case? These pictures are worth a thousand questions…
It’s a phenomenon with some precedent: import manufacturers will get nowhere with a certain bodystyle or drivetrain until one of the US domestic brands jumps on the bandwagon and popularizes it. And Jeff Breneman, executive director of the U.S. Coalition for Advanced Diesel Cars, is hoping the same dynamic plays out in the world of diesel power when Chevy brings its Cruze Diesel to the US. He tells WardsAuto
The fact that Chevy will offer a diesel Cruze in 2013 is huge. The gas-powered Cruze will get 40 mpg (5.9 L/100 km), so the diesel is expected to get 50 mpg-plus (4.7 L/100 km), and that will make it a game-changer.
Ford, Toyota or Honda haven’t got a diesel for the U.S. yet, but get ready for 2013-2014. That’s when we’re going to see a lot more diesels.
And, as the diesel booster-in-chief, it’s not surprising that Breneman would come to that conclusion. But what are folks inside GM saying about the Cruze diesel? In a recent interview with TTAC, senior advisor Bob Lutz suggested that we shouldn’t expect the Cruze diesel to conquer America or “change the game” all that much.
Japanese carmakers, which barely have recovered from the effects of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, find themselves in another catastrophe. Floods in Thailand cost Japanese automakers approximately 6,000 cars a day, Toshiyuki Shiga, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said today in Tokyo. Read More >
According to U.A.W. talking points, the Japanese car market is closed to foreign imports, and the yen is kept artificially low. Utter insanity on both counts. The customs duty on new cars imported to Japan is exactly zero, and the yen is so obscenely expensive that Japanese carmakers openly threaten to leave and privately are shifting as much production as possible out of the country. Unbeknownst to talking point readers, Japan has had a thriving car import market for decades. For more than a year, imports to Japan showed an uptick. TTAC has been taking about this for quite a while, here, then here and also here.
Today, The Nikkei [sub] did wise up to the fact that imports are getting hotter in Japan despite a tepid new car market. The Nikkei sent a reporter to an Audi showroom, interviewed a BMW customer, and noted a societal change: “My wife prefers foreign cars, so that’s why we bought one,” a bank employee who traded his domestic car for a BMW told The Nikkei. “They have lower fuel efficiency than Japanese cars, but that is not a big problem because we drive only on weekends.”
Now what’s really going on with imports to Japan? Let’s look at it a little closer. Read More >
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