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Toyota expands -- and tends to growing pains
Toyota Discussions related to Toyota cars and trucks (alt.autos.toyota)
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#21
 
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Re: Toyota expands -- and tends to growing pains -
04-25-2007
, 09:16 AM
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That is probably why Toyota was number in recalls in 2006. Every manufacturer makes some that are not up to their standards on occasion. That is why they all offer a warranty, even Rolls Royce. When one is selling thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of anything, fewer of the bad once are noticed, but when you sell in the millions like the domestics more of the bad ones get noticed As to stopping the line, workers on domestics assembly lines can do the same, and have been able tot do so you at least 20 years, that I know of. mike Yeah, but at what cost. I know someone that has dated workers at both |
Georgetown. Here's how she summarized what her boyfriends said about the
two plants:
"If you stop the line at Toyota you get rewarded. If you stop the line
at Ford you get fired."
#22
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"If you stop the line at Toyota you get rewarded. If you stop the line at Ford you get fired." |
Toyota, they reward you? Seems unlikely to me.
Ed
#23
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If one looks at CR reports as the percentage that it actually is, rather than as a list, you will discover that the number of defects in vehicles is at the lower end of the 2% to 3% average for all manufacturing. Chances of getting one of the 98% are far greater than one of the 2% that may have problems, one might suspect The average for all vehicles in not 2.29 but .0229%, just over 2%. The difference is actually not 0.21 or 0.5 problems, but .021% and .005%. Hardly worth spending 20% to 30% more to drive home a Toyota of a similar size and equipped domestic. But hey who ever said Toyota buyers were very astute shoppers? If you are the average new car buyer in the US you will replace it with another new vehicle in three to four years, with 30K to 45K on the clock. ANY new vehicle one buys today will easily go twice that mileage before needing any repairs. Why pay 20% to 30% more to drive any one home over any other? Most of the guy in this NG are used car buyers. They will tell you they bought a Toyota because the five year old domestic, they bought used ten years ago, broke down but the five year old Toyota they bought two years ago runs fine. Even it that were true, if you run a vehicle up to the more than average 140K, say 200K over seven years before you get another, and need to replace the power steering pump on the import at 120K at a cost of $200 and you needed to change the one on your domestic 110K, at a cost of $120, what have you saved? They like to point to the "higher" resale value of a Toyota, yet forget the much higher drive home price when the purchased the Toyota. In three years a Toyota my be worth say $3,000 more, or $1,000 more used in seven years, than a domestic but at an initial drive home price of $5,000 MORE when new, or $3,000 MORE to buy used, which has the better resale value?  The truth of the mater the record kept in our fleet service business, proved Japanese brands cost more to acquire, insure, maintain, repair and replace than those from domestics. On that basis Ford vehicles were by far the most costs effective. That is one reason few corporate fleets, who generally keep the vehicles in service for five years or 300K WOF because of federal deprecation tax laws, buy few Japanese cars and the reason Ford sells over 75% of the vehicles purchase by corporate fleets. If you look at the imports fleets do buy, with the exception of luxury vehicles, they are Korean cars. Few corporate fleets imported trucks. mike "C. E. White" <cewhite3 (AT) removemindspring (DOT) com> wrote in message news:462cda64$1 (AT) kcnews01 (DOT) .. "High Tech Misfit" <me (AT) privacy (DOT) net> wrote in message news:1i0cjkpkgad51.dlg (AT) hightech (DOT) misfit... Jeff wrote: Toyota has been experiencing growing pains. They had some quality issues in the last few years. Yeah, but at least they have been busting their asses to rectify those quality issues, which is A LOT more than one can say for the big 3. Why would you say that? All the domestic manufacturers have shown improved quality in recent years. Even CR has noted this. In the JD Powers Rankings, Toyota is still doing well, but the difference in quality has been in the noise range for years. In the 2006 JDP Initial Quality Study, Toyotas averaged 1.06 problems, the industry average was 1.27. I doubt 0.21 problems was statistically significant. In the 2006 Vehicle Dependability Study (a study of three year old models), Toyota finished behind Mercury, Buick and Cadillac. The average three year old Toyota had 1.79 problems. The industry average was 2.29 problems. For people that trust CR, Camrys were claimed to less reliable than Ford Fusions. Toyota builds reliable cars, but the question is, how much extra are you willing to pay to avoid 0.21 or even 0.5 problems? Ed |
#24
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The most likely reason why the rental companies bought GM and Fords is that GM and Fords used to own some of the large rental companies and even after they sold them off GM and Ford gave them cars for almost nothing to keep their factories humming. If GM or Ford gave me their cars for nothing I would probably drive them too. |
companies only a little over the incremental cost to produce the vehicles.
Given the UAW contracts which required workers to be paid around 95% of
their normal wages whether they were building cars or not, it is easy to see
why Ford, GM, and Chrysler would decide to keep the workers busy building
fleet cars rather than let them sit around idly. Unfortunately, this
strategy had a very real dark side. The rental car companies turn their
fleets over very quickly, so they are constantly dumping a lot of low
mileage good condition cars on the market. These compete directly with new
cars from the domestic manufacturers. Chrysler has been particularly hard
hit because their dealers find it more profitable to sell used "program
cars" rather than new models. Ford and GM have now cut their work forces
down significantly, so the need to keep workers busy has decreased. Both
Ford and GM are cutting low profit fleet sales. This has had negative
affects on their market share, but in the long run it is a very necessary
step.
One funny thing - although Ford used to own Hertz, the only two times I
rented cars from Hertz, I got Toyotas (but the rentals were in Hawaii).
Ed
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