Toyota 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.
“This is the worst situation we’ve faced since the war,” a source close to Toyota told the Yomiuri Shimbun. The Japanese car industry is facing post-war-like shortages when it comes to auto parts. Toyota is short 150 parts positions, which can be anything from a bolt to a complete dashboard.
Dealerships are empty – of cars. Test drive cars do double duty as display vehicles. “We get a lot of customers coming in, but we don’t have cars to sell them,” a salesperson told the Tokyo paper. Read More >
Given the way that Beetles have had all their parts swapped over the decades, I’m always reluctant to try to nail down an exact model year of a street-parked example, particularly when it’s a primered-out survivor owned by a guy who spends a lot of time at junkyards. If we are to go by the taillights and hood latch, this car should be a ’68… or it might be a ’64 with a fender swap… or a ’74 pan with a ’68 body. Anyway, the important thing is that it’s an old air-cooled Volkswagen survivor that gets used as a tow vehicle. Read More >
12 years. That’s how long I drove a 1994 Toyota Camry LE coupe. It was red with a sunroof and ABS. Truly loaded for the time. But not quite loaded for the modern day. I never even considered anything else because to me this was just like an underpowered Lexus without the cost.
We’re talking the type of quiet and serenity that many compact vehicles (which this technically was) still can’t match. The 3rd Generation Camry was the absolute peak of Toyota’s over-engineering prowess and my car pulled a straight 239k with nary a hiccup. One owner later, it just recently crested the 300k mark with plenty of life left on the original powertrain. With that in mind I can…
I got the call yesterday from a friend of mine. His long-serving 1999 Land Cruiser V8, purchased new and driven well past the 150K-mile mark, had a bad alternator. Could I pick him up at the dealer? Sure could.
The fellow I picked up was a lot more annoyed than the relatively calm fellow who had pulled his Cruiser into the Toyota service bay. The prospect of losing an alternator after twelve years didn’t bother him in the slightest. Instead, it was what had happened when the service writer called his name…
Japanese output of the eight major Japanese carmakers’ plunged 57.5 percent in March from a year earlier to 387,567 units. That is some 465,000 units less than planned, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Here are the March Japan production numbers for the individual automakers: Read More >
Since my return on Friday from the New York Auto Show, my friends and co-workers have been relentlessly asking me, “What was the big story there?” After I tell them the big story — that I saw Mike Stern play in the Village with some friends and then squired two fabulous ladies around New York until 5:30AM — they ask me to shut up about that and tell them about the car story.
Fair enough. The story this year is fuel economy, just like it was thirty years ago. The difference this time? Fuel economy, like every other crappy thing in this world, from Russian vodka to TAG Heuer watches, has gone upscale.
Toyota published production and sales results for the 2010 fiscal year. The fiscal is a Japanese oddity. It starts on April 1 and goes through March 31. Financial data will be announced on May 11.
Nothing highly unusual for the full fiscal. Japan is down, overseas is up. Read More >
Like I did for Libya and Yemen, it is my duty to keep you up-to-date on which cars are bought in the countries you are hearing about in the news.This is why this weekend we are going where the French special forces lately went: To the Ivory Coast, a very interesting, fast evolving market with French, Japanese and Chinese influences. Read More >
Last week we discussed a rumor that suggested the new 2013 Malibu’s rear legroom might be compromised as a result of its redesign, and in the original post I included the official manufacturer numbers for rear legroom in the “big six” midsize sedans. This led to an interesting discussion in our comments section, and the comparison apparently caught the attention of at least one boss of a global automaker’s US operations. This exec (who has admitted to being a daily TTAC reader), wrote in to point out that there are two different SAE standards for measuring rear legroom, the L33 “Effective legroom” test, in which the front seat is placed at the appropriate distance for a driver in the 95 percentile of height, and the L34 “Maximum driver legroom” test, in which the front seat is placed all the way before measuring. As a result of our conversation, I thought I’d share a comparison of the six best-selling D-segment sedans using a different (and hopefully less-confusing) metric: combined legroom. You can move the seat, but you can’t run away from this metric…
The Detroit Free Press reports, almost giddily, that GM will almost certainly replace Toyota as the world’s largest automaker by volume this year, as tsunami-related production problems will continue to plague the Japanese automaker. The graph above, by IHS Global Insight [via AutoObserver], shows that the impacts of the tsunami will continue to be felt well into next year, and that Japanese production will likely fall permanently by around 15%. Toyota’s full-year production could be cut by around 20%, possibly bumping the automaker to the third position in the global volume race, after GM and VW.
This is the BYD F0. I’ll leave it to the experts which other car this resembles. It reminds me a bit of that car, but maybe only because it’s so small and red. It should be red. It’s embarrassing. Read More >
In a surprise press conference that had not been confirmed as late as last night, Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda laid out plans for Toyota getting back to normal. Bottom line: Toyota hopes to be back to normal by the end of the year.
“To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle made by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery,” Akio Toyoda said. Read More >
When the first rumors of a possible tie-up between Volkswagen and Isuzu were floating around, they were vigorously denied by Isuzu, and meekly (“currently not on the agenda”) denied by Volkswagen. Here they are again. The Nikkei [sub] writes without the usual qualifications that „Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Volkswagen AG have begun negotiating a tie-up involving the mutual supply of truck engines and related technologies, a move that could create a formidable force in emerging markets.”
According to the report, if that engine deal progresses well, “they will also consider acquiring stakes in each other.” Read More >
During an intimate round table in Shanghai, usually well informed reporters were harping on the influence of radiation on Toyota sales. I expected the heads of communication of Toyota worldwide and Toyota China to blurt out: “Radiation? What impacts sales is the fact that we don’t have any cars to sell.” But they kept their cool in the face of a hot topic.
After a month-long quake-induced hiatus, Toyota restarted production in all Japanese factories on Monday. In the meantime, the shockwaves of the tsunami ripple through the supply lines. Read More >
Recent Comments