The Japanese auto industry is staring at the calendar like a rabbit at the snake. October 1, the rabbit will be dinner. October 1,  government subsidies for purchases of “environmentally friendly vehicles” (read pretty much any new vehicle that passes Japanese rules) will be no more. According to popular wisdom, come October, the Japanese new car market that had enjoyed double digits growth rates, will go poof and implode.

So what to do in a country where with the exception of flu masks, the Top 10 list of popular products ”was dominated by low-priced retail merchandise and eco-friendly products as consumers pinched pennies and took advantage of government stimulus subsidies” as Reuters put it? Simple: Local subsidies. (Read More…)

Do you remember when Saturn made a last ditch attempt to bring customers back to their showrooms? It asked us to “Rethink” Saturn. Whatever our perception was of them, we almost certainly had it wrong and we had to check them out once more. Ford did a similar thing with “Have you driven a Ford lately?” It’s quite a clever strategy, convince the customer that they had it wrong about your product and invite them to try them again. Well, Toyota seems to trying a similar tactic in order to woo customers back and polish up their corporate image. Now at this point you’re expecting me to unveil some hokey advert which asks us “Try Toyota” (if Toyota is reading this, give me a call and we can work out a licensing fee for my ad slogan). Wrong. It’s not their products. They are fine.

Toyota asks us to rethink the meaning of recall. (Read More…)

Remember the huge parking lots full of unsold cars? That picture was on everybody’s mind as they analyzed new Japanese inventory reports of cars and electronics. According to The Nikkei [sub], the stuff is piling up again, fueling angst about a double dip recession. (Read More…)

We had been reporting for quite a while that estranged Ford and Mazda had filed for divorce that would annul their three-way ménage with China’s Changan. If you’ve ever been through a divorce (don’t remind me) you know that that can take a while and can drive you bonkers. Time for a celebration: (Read More…)

The Nikkei [sub] reminds Toyota fanpersons and Toyota haters alike that Toyota “still faces uncertain times despite the preliminary findings of a U.S. Transportation Department investigation that indicate driver error may have been a contributing factor.” You mean, that wasn’t the fat lady? You mean, we have to wait for someone more obese? (Read More…)

Now that at least partial civility has returned, with Congress having been officially notified that no ghosts were found in any Toyota machines, and that “the evidence points to a preponderance of cases where people who claimed unintended acceleration were pressing the wrong pedal,” it’s time to ratchet-down the tension on both sides.

In diplo-speak, that’s called “confidence-building measures,” or CBMs for short (not to be mistaken for ICBMs.) Toyota is performing CBMs. In a country that is suspect of  building ICBMs. (Read More…)

Range anxiety. The performance angst and penis envy of the new millennium. So you want to be nice to the planet. You no longer want to desecrate dead dinosaurs. You want to plug in and tune out.

But you also want visit grandpa and grandma who live 150 miles away, and you don’t want to overstay your welcome with an orange cord dangling out of the window. What to do? It’s so simple, that we wonder why nobody has thought of it: (Read More…)

Everybody in the Japanese auto biz (and who’s not in the auto biz in Japan, except my friends who, but that’s for another day), everybody in the Japanese auto biz has their eye on the sky. Why? Because the sky is soon to drop. On September 30, government subsidies for purchases of “environmentally friendly vehicles” (read pretty much any new vehicle that passes Japanese rules) will expire. Everybody expects a mad dash in August and September, and in October: Whammo. Down comes the sky. (Read More…)

Toyota’s capacity utilization at U.S. plants dropped to 60 percent in the second half of 2008 after the economic crisis hit the U.S.  Enough of this.  Utilization is  up to 90 percent already. Next year, Toyota plans to run its N.A. factories at full tilt. More than that: Workers will be doing overtime, work weekend and holiday shifts, says The Nikkei [sub].

Of course, the fact that NUMMI is off-line could also have something to do with it.

Japan’s Internal Affairs Ministry has bad news for Japan’s automakers: Japanese citizens are dumping their cars and take the train. Domestic car ownership has declined for the first time since 1964, with declines particularly pronounced in big cities, report The Nikkei [sub]: “Less-status-conscious city residents are abandoning cars for public transit.” (Read More…)

In Europe, hybrids are treated as the work of the devil. In America, hybrids are more a statement of political leanings. Japan is downright hybrid-kichi (crazy). Exhibit A: Toyota’s Prius sales. (Read More…)

Three Japanese automakers, Honda, Nissan, and Fuji Heavy are officially out of the woods, at least financially. The Nikkei [sub] says they “put the global financial crisis behind them, reporting net profits that surpassed those from two years earlier in the April-June quarter.” (Read More…)

Running a multi-national car company the size of, say, General Motors, Ford or Toyota means having lean, efficient operations. In the SUV/light trucks segment, turning a profit is easy. Because of the inherent profitability of these products, your operations don’t need to be that efficient to turn a decent profit. Where you really need to concentrate on profits is the other end of the scale. The small car market. This is where raiding the parts bin, nicking a platform from another division and moving production to a low cost country are taken as read when producing a plan for your next small car. But what if you’re trying to break into a market where small cars need to be firmly in the “four figures” price bracket? Well, this is the problem that Volkswagen is having in India. Like China, every car maker wants a piece of this Asian Tiger Elephant, but Volkswagen just simply doesn’t have the presence there to make their cars profitably. Or do they? (Read More…)

It’s the war of the unreleased documents. Days after a former NHTSA chief accused the NHTSA of burying evidence that shows that driver error was the cause in 23 out of 23 cases, ABC has the story that Toyota knew long ago how to cause sudden unintended acceleration in their cars, and failed to tell everybody how to go about it. (Read More…)

Imagine yourself going down the road with your foot on the brake pedal all the time. This is a Japanese inventor’s idea to stop driver error and unintended acceleration. To accelerate, you move your foot sideways against an accelerator bar. To brake, you stomp on the brake. A horrible thought – if you are a personal injury lawyer. (Read More…)