In a normal world, an automaker wants to time the announcement of a new car just right: In time to build anticipation. Not too early, because that would hurt sales of last year’s models. In Japan, they keep things simple and have the press event the day the car goes on sale. Today, I was at a press event in Tokyo that celebrated the Prius Alpha, a bigger, roomier minivanish Prius that can seat 7. If you’d order it today, you would get your car in a distant future, in April 2012. No typo. 11 months from now. Next year.

Welcome to the new world of post-tsunami car launches. (Read More…)

Something else was announced today at the Toyota results conference, and lost on most in the packed room. A remark by CFO Satoshi Ozawa that the long discussed rotating power rationing plan is now a done deal. (Read More…)

When I arrived at Toyota’s downtown Tokyo basement conference room, I bumped into Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco, who was in the grips of stage fright. Annual results conferences with the world watching can do that to a spokesman. Trying to cheer Paul up in my charming way, I said: “Come on Paul. This one will be great. It’s the next ones that will be rotten as hell.” Paul gave me a pained look.

When I left an hour and a half later, I had changed my mind. Toyota will survive this crisis just like it survived the previous two: Stronger. Not unscathed, but not as badly affected as some officially fear and silently hope. What may not survive are Japanese jobs. (Read More…)

In a packed conference room in downtown Tokyo, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda announced this afternoon that Toyota finished the fiscal year to March 31, 2011 with a group net profit of  408.1 billion yen ($5 billion), up 95 percent on the year. This despite an ever increasing yen that is driving the company – and a lot of the Japanese industry – “to the limit” as CFO Satoshi Ozawa (above) warned. Sitting next to Toyoda, Ozawa said that he might have to recommend to his CEO to move production elsewhere unless a level playing field is created.

Ozawa put the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami at  110 billion yen ($1.36 billion). However, the fiscal year had ended two weeks after the catastrophe. Financially, the worst is yet to come. Toyota appears to be in excellent financial and operational shape to weather a few quarters until production is back on line – which will happen earlier than expected.

More as I have worked through my notes. There will be some interesting morsels.

A bevy of industry figures and politicos congregated yesterday in Torrance, CA, to celebrate the grand opening of a new gas station. But it wasn’t just any new gas station … (Read More…)

If everything goes according to what The Nikkei [sub] has heard on the grapevine sake circuit, Toyota will deliver a plug-in Prius hybrid by 2014. A plug-in with an interesting twist … (Read More…)

Yesterday, Friday, the Japanese government ordered requested the shutdown of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant, 117 kilometers (73 miles) southwest of Tokyo. No accident had occurred, the measure was a precaution.  The plant provided power to the Aichi prefecture where Toyota and many other industries are located.

According to The Nikkei [sub], “chronic power supply troubles threaten Toyota Motor Corp. and the other manufacturers that call the region home. At this point, Toyota has no idea what effect shutting down Hamaoka will have on its operations, a person familiar with the automaker said Friday.” (Read More…)

Japan’s carmakers are slowly returning back to normal, hobbled only by unsure supply of parts and sometimes power. It will be slow going and full of surprises. One thing is for sure: The March 11 tsunami will have an ugly effect on carmakers’ books. Combined losses for the Japan’s carmakers and suppliers could “the biggest ever,” surpassing those during 2008 to 2009 financial crisis, Noriyuki Matsushima, an analyst in Tokyo at Citigroup Inc., told Bloomberg. (Read More…)

The Brazilian autoblogosphere is up in arms because of an alleged censoring attempt by Toyota do Brasil. A month after the Brazilian blog Notícias Automotivas had run a piece on the upcoming Toyota Corolla S, they received a letter from Toyota do Brasil’s Legal Department. The Corolla S looks like not much more than a customized Corolla with red stitching on faux racing seats. The letter, dated April 29, 2011, looks scary.

We have received what we believe is a faithful translation of the letter from Brazilian Portuguese Legalese to English. The letter demands, within 24 hours of receipt, the takedown of the whole story, plus something unheard of: (Read More…)

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…)

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…)

Nissan’s Iwaki engine plant is back on line, as this video from Nissan’s in-house channel attests. The plant, located some 35 miles away from the stricken Fukushima power plant, was severely damaged by the quake and had been off-line ever since March 11. (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…)

The joint Subaru-Toyota “FT-86” has been hyped for some time now as a modern-day AE86, a car with which Akio Toyoda hopes to recapture the “splendid flavor” of driving excitement that has been missing from Toyotas for some time. An affordable halo, in other words, which reconnects Toyota to the youthful enthusiasm of young men in search of rear-drive antics. And since it’s facing an aging demographic, that’s not a bad idea for the Toyota brand. Unfortunately, the latest look at the Toyobaru’s evolving styling is being shown in New York as a Scion, the brand that exists to prove that the Toyota brand can’t be youthful and exciting (and which just got a new sports coupe).

I’ve been on the record as a Scion-basher for some time, so I won’t beat a dead horse here… but if the FT-86 is supposed to be a halo for Toyota, it can’t just be shuffled off to the Scion ghetto. The car will probably sell regardless of the badge it ends up wearing, but the Toyota brand needs this enthusiasm investment, and Scion just needs to die.

Here in North America, Toyota’s marketing wizards figured out that a vehicle name that sounds like “Master Race” would be something of a liability, so they put in a bunch of grueling all-nighters and produced… the Toyota Van Wagon. Not so fast, said Volkswagen, claiming that the name sounded too much like “Vanagon,” and Toyota lopped off the “Wagon” to create a van name so boring that we still can’t quite believe it ever existed: Toyota Van. (Read More…)