…
…
So you’re saying Toyota wouldn’t publicly announce that they were trying to be “king of trucks” because they’d want to keep it from the public in case they failed, yet you try to make your point by saying they use a public medium (commercials)?
I’m not pulling this stuff out of my ass here and I don’t expect you to believe me. You can think what you want. It still doesn’t change this fact:
“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. ”
We’ve had this conversation here on NYSpeed already:
… but you’re missing a huge point.
GM makes almost all of it’s money from it’s trucks, Toyota does not.
Toyota didn’t start making full size trucks to sell more than GM, but simply take away some market share so that they could hurt GMs profits… not that GM has made any money recently anyway.
So what that chart really means is that GM lost 137k potential truck sales to Toyota simply because they offer an alternative. And because GM has “all it’s eggs in one basket” when it comes to only making a good profit margin from their trucks, it also mean GM lost almost 20% of what they could have made before Toyota decided to build full size trucks.
Under that logic, Toyota makes most of its money from small to midsize cars, GM does not. So what that means is that Toyota lost potential car sales to everyone who bought a GM car, simply because they offer an alternative.
You’re almost right, that’s why GM came out with the new Malibu to try and cut into sales of the Camary. But the difference is that if Toyota looses the sale of a Camary, they can still compensate by make money from Corolla, Avalon or even a Tundra. Since GM only makes money from trucks they can’t do the same by selling more Cobalts or Impalas.