Come June, Toyota “plans to bring domestic auto production back to as much as 90 percent of targets set before the March earthquake hit, thanks to faster-than-expected improvements in parts supplies,” The Nikkei [sub] writes today. At the annual results conference in Tokyo, Akio Toyoda had said Toyota Toyoda would be on its way back to normal beginning in June, with hopefully 70 percent of production reinstated in summer. This was already a two month improvement over previous plans. Two weeks later, the outlook seems to be even better. If The Nikkei heard correctly. Read More >
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Category: Toyota
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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. |
According to one car guy, global warming is a crock of excrement. Toyota wants to get to the bottom of it. Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Central R&D Labs have developed a simulator able to predict tropospheric ozone concentrations across the whole of South and East Asia. Read More >
This new Volkswagen ad is the first global thrust of the firm’s latest ad campaign, which centers around the concept of environmental friendliness, and the tagline “Think Blue.” The ad is nothing special in itself, other than being somewhat hypnotic in its cross-cultural depiction of changing environmental consciousness, but the blue-is-the-new-green campaign as a whole is more than a little confusing for a number of reasons.
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Last January, Toyota’s Prez Akio Toyoda visited Salesforce.com CEO and cloud computing proselytizer extraordinaire Mark Benioff in Benioff’s sprawling compound on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Great Britain two weeks ago. Albania last week, enough of Europe. Pakistan has been in the center of world news for a little while now, so it is time to explore what are the best selling cars in that country.
Now if you don’t want to hear one more word about the (spoiler alert!) Toyota Corolla and would like to know about the best selling models in 154 other countries, you’ve come to the right place: you can explore these countries in my blog. Very enjoyable! Yes, I promise!
The Pakistan Automobile Manufacturers Association has been compiling sales of models produced locally since 1998. Not that long ago, I grant you, but it’s better than nothing! And given the tough restrictions imposed on all imported car, really, the locally produced models are the only ones that count so we’ll be staying pretty close to the truth…
If I only had 30 seconds to summarize the Pakistani car market structure it would still be ok because I’d only have to say Toyota Corolla and Suzuki Mehran…
But I have a bit more time so I can dwell on the details. Read More >
While the political battle lines over increasing CAFE standards are being drawn in Washington, with the industry taking on both environmentalists and itself, a line of analysis that’s been around since 2009 is exacerbating the industry’s internal divisions over the impact of CAFE increases. A two-year-old University of Michigan study has been exhumed and expanded upon in a new CitiGroup report which makes a bold claim: CAFE will actually improve both sales and profits for the industry. And with Detroit taking the lead in resisting CAFE increases, one might think that the industry’s “turncoats” like Toyota and Hyundai, who have made marketing-led decisions to support CAFE increases, would be the main beneficiaries of these reports. Not so. According to this battle-line-confounding analysis, the biggest beneficiary of CAFE increases will be… Detroit. Madness you say? You may well be right…
With all the news about earthquakes and tsunamis, you would think that the lots of your favorite ricer retailer are bare. They aren’t. But some dealers hang on to what they have got and sell it at healthy mark-ups, assuming that the pipeline will run dry. Both Honda and Nissan are unhappy with this perception and tell their dealers to move the metal. “Honda told its U.S. dealers Friday that July vehicle deliveries would increase by 11% from June levels and accelerate in August as the auto maker ramps up production after the March 11 earthquake in Japan,” says The Nikkei [sub]. Read More >
With VW wading into the budget roadster segment with its forthcoming BlueSport mid-engine roadster, it seems that Kia wants in on the action as well. Reports are surfacing in Europe and the US that the Korean automaker is making good on Peter Schreyer’s threats, and is developing its first roadster since it bought up the tooling and IP for Lotus’s front-drive Elan, which it sold in Korea between 1996 and 1999.
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Some folks in the industry believe that Toyota has decontented themselves out of the top tier of quality. I don’t know if that’s true… yet. But I do know that they are not the only non-domestic manufacturer to have gone down that path. Not long after Mercedes turned the W124 model into a glorified Taurus, the Swedes begin sauntering into the path of cheap redesigns.
The goal as always was profit. To make the cheaper product (the 1998 Volvo S70) resemble the better one (the much loved 1993 – 1997 Volvo 850). The outcome became very profitable… for me.
If there’s one thing you get here at TTAC, it’s diversity. Well, it’s actually sarcasm, but you also get diversity. Here’s an example: This week, we tested two different cars. Out on the West Coast, Alex and his partner were rolling around in a completely electric Nissan Leaf. Imagine them, gliding silently down the road, perhaps having a polite conversation about the proper color of glass for one’s table service. No, that isn’t a stereotype, I happen to know that he’s actually worrying about that. Think of the peace! The quiet! The sustainability!
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, your humble author was thumping a Lexus IS-F down the back straight at Summit Point’s Shenandoah Raceway. I had a stunning-looking young woman from metro DC trapped in the passenger seat and digging her nails into the door handle. We were swinging the needle past 110mph, deep into the braking zone, gulping fuel at a rate of just four miles per gallon.
It’s hard to believe that one site can bring you both kinds of coverage, the same way it’s hard to believe that the Leaf and the IS-F can both be produced by the same enormous Japanese conglomerate.
The ripple effects of the March 11 tsunami keep bouncing around the globe. The is good news and bad news. (Or bad news and good news, depending on the side you are on.) Read More >
Japan has hit on the world’s most effective energy conservation program. It is three words long: “Conserve, or else.” With 32 of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors down in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan must get through the hot summer without a total breakdown of the infrastructure. It looks like they will do it by sheer willpower. Read More >
TTAC reader sportsuburbanGT writes:
Hi Sajeev,
Have a couple of questions: I have a 72 Dodge Dart that I am performing a 318 to 340 swap. It’s taken longer than I planned (lack of time), I backed the car in the garage 2 years ago and now I am planning on firing it up in this April. The question is the gas: I had about a half tank when I backed it in, and I put some Stabil in the tank, but I took the cap off to try a new cap and the tank smelled really awful. I replaced the fuel filter, but should I drain the tank and refill with fresh gas, put some fresh gas in the tank to mix up what is in there, or pull the tank have it boiled out and refill. I was driving the car up until March 2009, and I put that last half tank in there in March 2009. I am in Long Island, NY so we have that crap gas till April.
From “promisingly awkward” mule to multiple styling “concepts” we’ve had plenty of looks at the many possible shapes that Toyota is considering for its forthcoming “FT-86” rear-drive budget sports coupe. But now, with Toyota finalizing the production look of its eagerly-anticipated sports coupe, we’re finally getting a good look at the FT-86’s production-ready proportions, if not its approved styling cues. And by the looks of it, it’s a clean, conventional coupe with just enough of a convention-defying low-hood look (enabled by Subaru’s boxer engine) to avoid looking like a scaled-down Z. In fact, this car’s ability to appear conventional yet subtly distinctive seems to be rooted in its small, rear-drive proportions rather than any one styling feature we’ve seen on a concept. Given the inherent challenge of building sportscars that offers broad appeal as well as enough distinctiveness to get enthusiasts fired up, this looks like a good sign for the FT-86’s future.
If you are looking for a growth market for cars, don’t look to Europe. In terms of car sales, the Old Country is going sideways with a negative bias. In April, sales of new cars in the EU was down 4.1 percent on the year. New registrations amounted to 1,089,118 units. For the first four months of 2011, registrations totaled 4,674,457 units, or 2.7 percent less than over the same period a year earlier. This according to data released by the European Auto Manufacturers Association ACEA. Read More >
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