Toyota Motor Corp. lost 765.8 billion yen ($7.74 billion) in its fiscal fourth quarter, leading the world’s largest auto maker by car sales to its first full-year loss in 59 years and setting the stage for even worse results in the current fiscal year.
Battered by stagnant sales, bloated inventories and a strong yen, the Japanese car maker booked a 437 billion yen loss for the fiscal year ended March 31. It forecast a 550 billion yen loss for the fiscal year ending in March 2010.
The forecast for a bigger loss this fiscal year indicates Toyota misfires in China, where it missed the demand for smaller cars, and in the U.S., where its costly push into full-size pickup trucks collided with economic slowdown, won’t soon allow it to capitalize on Detroit’s woes.
I understand GM also just lost a ton of money and taking government hand outs, but it gets annoying to hear Toyota referred to as the perfect model. Obliviously even perfection is having a hard time with the current situation.
Toyota. Then I’d sell it to GM at a huge discount that would still make me filthy rich, under the condition that they build a ton of LSx specialty shit for me.
It’s funny because Toyota is in trouble because they tried to get into the one market that was going well for the domestics, full sized trucks. Honda said “fuck that pickup truck and monster SUV noise” and they’re still posting profits.
Are you mistaking the Ridgeline as a Toyota product???
I really hope more people hear about this news of Toyota…for too long the media has slammed Detroit and let so many other car companies get off scottfree.
The Ridgeline does not compete with full sized trucks. It has a V6 and a towing capacity of 5000lbs. The Ridgeline stuck to the model Toyota abandoned with the redesigned Tundra; offering a 7/8ths truck because most people don’t need all the capacity of an F150/Silverado/Ram/Titan/New Tundra.
What’s funny is the old Tundra, that was a 7/8ths full size, lost all the full sized comparison tests because it wasn’t a “real” full sized truck. You have to wonder how it would be selling now if it was still 7/8th size.
Who compared the two?
One is obliviously worse off than the other, but to many this news is like seeing the guy that got 1600 on the SAT, ivy school, great job and a beautiful girlfriend, that couldn’t do anything wrong.
And you see him in the Niagara Falls police blotter.
Everyone likes to see the golden boy get knocked down a couple rungs.
The big issue was Toyota’s unwillingness to have competitive leases compared to Nissan/Honda.
A civic was about $80 less per month than a comparable corolla. Likewise for the camry/accord and sienna/odyssey.
Now, with incentives like lower money factors, and better residual values…you’re going to see less of a gap between the two and in a couple instances, better pricing between Honda/Toyota.
Regardless of what the rest of the country is doing, our store is cranking. :tup:
They didn’t “try” to get into the market, they DID get into the market with the simple goal of taking away a small amount of market share from the domestic automakers. Same thing Nissan did with the Titan. And since the domestic automakers make the majority of their profits from trucks, even if you take a small percent of market share you’re taking a good percent of profits away from them.
They never started making trucks to outsell the domestics; only to steal away a % of their potential sales and as a result, a larger % of their profits. And it worked.
Toyota was trying to be the “leader” in trucks, why would you spend millions of dollars in R&D/advertising just to “be in competition”
Companies don’t make a product just to have one, they want theirs to be better than everyone else’s. The “oh we just wanted to gain a little bit of revenue, that was our whole plan” is just the excuse for failing at their original goal.
You don’t have to believe me; search the web and NYSpeed. It has been discussed before.
No one from Toyota ever said they were trying to be the “leader” in trucks;
"Toyota’s Lentz didn’t get into specific volume targets but did admit that he harbors no delusions of toppling the heavies in the segment.
“We’ll have to see where the market takes us,” he said. “But do we ever foresee selling Ford and Chevy size numbers? No – not gonna happen.”Click HERE
“As for the large pickups, the segment operates within the mathematical rule of 100 percent (Al, January 2003). Any new entry into any market will automatically reduce the market share of the originals.”Click HERE
By them saying this, they are allowing for “failure”.
If i bought fantasy island, and my goal was to turn it into a “disney world” (which would never happen, and I would never announce this to the public) I Wouldn’t look as stupid when I failed at reaching my goal. My PERSONAL goal, it would not trickle into the media, because no one else would know besides myself and a few higher ups who are actually involved in the decision making of the company.
Obviously toyota was expecting to succeed much more than they did.
Do you think toyota would publicly announce that they were going to be king of trucks? Have you watched their commercials? Apparently their truck is the greatest thing evAr.
