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.
The first waves of the Japanese tsunami are reaching consumers at American shores. Oddly, some of the cars first affected may be the ones customers already have, not the ones they cannot buy. Toyota notified its dealers across the United States to prepare for a shortage of replacement parts, due to disruptions caused by the monster earthquake and tsunami in Japan, The Nikkei [sub] writes today.
Out of 300,000 “numbers”, as they call parts items in the vernacular, 233 are in short supply and have been “placed on controlled allocation,” as a Toyota U.S.A. statement says. Dealers are being asked to “refrain from placing any orders in excess of what is critically needed to support customer emergency need and true customer demand.” Read More >
On Tuesday, UAW leaders meeting here described plans to reach out to foreign unions and consumers in what would be their first major campaign since failed efforts in the last decade at Nissan Motor Co. and auto-parts supplier Denso Corp. They hope to be more successful by reaching out to foreign unions at the auto makers’ overseas plants and bringing pressure from prayer vigils, fasts or protests at dealerships.
A person familiar with the matter said the union is now planning to target one foreign auto maker and has narrowed its list to three or four companies. Inside the union, much of the talk centers on targeting the now-struggling Japanese auto maker Toyota or Korea’s Hyundai, this person said.
The UAW has set aside tens of millions of dollars from its strike fund to bankroll its campaign. International actions are to be coordinated with foreign unions and run by some three dozen student interns recruited globally, UAW officials said. When the interns return to their home countries after learning about the UAW efforts in the U.S., they’ll be expected to organize protests against the auto maker, UAW officials said.
OK, so it’s a little bit strange that the UAW is entrusting a campaign that UAW President Bob King calls “the single most important thing we can do for our members ” to a bunch of interns. Still, with “tens of millions of dollars” allocated towards the campaign, some automaker somewhere will be feeling the union’s hot breath on its neck in due course. So, which automaker will the UAW target? Which automaker should they target? And with the UAW apparently refusing to fight the two-tier wage structure, will any transplant or foreign workforce want to join up?
After the March 11 quake, when the office buildings stopped shaking, Toyota told its 500 staffers in Purchasing to contact suppliers. Each damaged supplier received a red pin on a large map of northeastern Japan. Soon, the map was swamped by a tsunami of red pins. Some suppliers “suffered the complete destruction of their factories,” writes The Nikkei [sub], “and were unable to determine how many of their employees were still alive.”
With more than 10,000 dead, more than 16,000 missing, and whole towns razed in the Tohoku area, many shops are now believed to be at the bottom of the furious sea.
“The word ‘ordeal’ does not even convey the gravity of the situation,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda says. Read More >
Who will be the world’s largest car company this year? There appears to be at least one car company that is (so far) totally unaffected by any parts malaises, supposed bursting bubbles in China and any other possible impediments to vehicular growth: Volkswagen. Veedub’s sales jefe Christian Klinger remarked at the sidelines of a press conference today that Volkswagen’s sales will hit record levels in March.
The Wall Street Journal could not believe its ears and sought confirmation. A Volkswagen spokesman said they heard right. Klingler didn’t give any further details, says the WSJ, but record levels can’t mean anything else than the best March ever in VW’s storied history. Read More >
By now, Toyota had wanted to have finished to move all of the production from Sagamihara near Tokyo to the new plant in Ohira in Miyagi Prefecture. Ohira already built the Yaris for export, the production of the Corolla for the domestic market was scheduled to follow, along with 400 employees who wanted to exchange the New Jersey-ish surroundings of Kanagawa for the mountainous beauty (and lower living expenses) of Ohira. Then, the tsunami intervened. Toyota has put a halt on the move. Read More >
In this second and last installment of the two part series (Parte Um here,) we see the Gol fall from the height of sportiness to the profound depths of strippo hell. Like that Greek hero, it lived on to rise and shine again. However, it now finds itself in the battle of its life.
In 1999, in what VW exaggeratedly called the third generation, the Gol and the Parati were restyled. In a complete flip-flop from the previous door austerity policy, and just as incoherent, they are now available only in 4 doors. However, a basic 1.0 Gol called Special remained with the old design as an entry-level option (and a way to fight Fiat’s Uno). The Saveiro would be redesigned in 2000. Internally, the whole line benefited from a more Audi-esque instrument cluster with VW’s signature blue and red lighting. Read More >
Alright so let’s keep these ‘round the world’ updates as relevant to world news as possible: After Libya, I decided to go to troubled Yemen to give you an idea of what cars the Yemeni consumer prefers. Read More >
So far, it had been clear that the March 11 earthquake and tsunami would create big problems for the auto industry in Japan in particular and worldwide in general. When asked when, where, and how much, all we received were shrugging shoulders when taking to a westernized counterpart, or an “eeeh” or the customary sucking of air through the teeth when talking to an old school Japanese. Now finally, the first facts emerge. Read More >
On March 17, Honda revealed its new low-cost, emerging-market, sales-busting (they hope) Brio. Well, at least in name Honda is looking for a fight as the car’s name, in Italian, means something along the lines of “fighting spirit”. Will it have a fighting chance to make it in Brazil? Read More >
Japan’s largest and second largest automakers are worlds apart. Last year, Nissan made less than half of the cars the world’s number one, Toyota produced. Looking at the February results of both, we see a Goliath that is slowing down and a David that is revving up mightily. What’s more, we see a Goliath that is heavily exposed to the destruction in Japan, and a David that had moved most of his production abroad, well before the Flood. Let’s compare David and Goliath. Read More >
The San Francisco Bay Area once had one of the world’s highest Volvo 240 concentrations, but a number of factors are conspiring to send vast numbers of Swedish bricks to The Crusher in recent years. How many? Let’s take a look at the 240 inventory I spotted yesterday at a high-turnover East Bay wrecking yard. Read More >
Vehicle output of Japan, the world’s second largest car producing nation, was down across the board in February. The reductions reported today by Japan’s majors pale in comparison to the dramatic losses that will be announced for March, and quite possibly for months to come. Read More >
Days after the earthquake an tsunami had devastated large parts of the north-east Tohoku area of Japan, Toyota was still cut off from its factories in the hardest hit Miyagi prefecture. A convoy of six water tankers, two fuel tankers and nine cargo trucks braved impassable or closed roads and reached the area on Sunday after the quake. A second convoy arrived on Monday.
By now, Toyota has an out-and-out private army in the region, helping factories and the surrounding communities. Read More >
Beginning on Monday, March 28, Toyota will restart production of three hybrid cars “which are in high demand” as Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said.
Both lines of Toyota’s Tsutsumi plant in Toyota City will begin full Prius production on Monday. These used to be mixed production lines. A few cars were left incomplete when Toyota stopped all production in all of Japan after the quake. Those cars will be finished. Then, both lines will make exclusively Prii (as in the now official Toyota Prius plural.) Read More >
Our daily run-down of delays, shut-downs, shortages, and postponements, triggered by the March 11 tsunami in Japan.
Toyota informed its U.S. dealers and workers to expect production slowdowns due to parts shortages. “Today, we communicated to team members, associates and dealers here that some production interruptions in North America are likely. It’s too early to predict location or duration,” Toyota said in a statement. Most, but not all of the parts for vehicles built in North America are sourced here. Wall Street Journal
Toyota expects to idle its pickup truck assembly plant south of San Antonio. “We are informing our team members that, with the situation over in Japan, it is likely that we will see some nonproduction days coming,” Craig Mullenbach, spokesman for Toyota’s San Antonio plant, said. Mullenbach added that parts needed to build the full-sized Tundra and mid-sized Tacoma pickup truck in San Antonio are running out. Reuters
Honda will suspend car production at its Japanese factories until at least April 3. Honda will temporarily transfer some functions such as car development and procurement out of its badly damaged R&D center in Tochigi. Reuters
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