Toyota vs. GM

[ra24man]

In case anyone was sleeping last week...check out this announcment in the NYTimes on the 24th.

Originally Posted by NewYorkTimes

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. outsold General Motors Corp. by around 90,000 vehicles in the first quarter, moving a step closer to unseating its U.S. rival as the world's biggest automaker.

Toyota has been widely expected to challenge 99-year-old GM this year for the top spot in global sales -- a position the Detroit behemoth has held for 76 years -- but the milestone came surprisingly early, industry watchers said.

Both companies reported record sales for January-March, but Japan's top carmaker inched past GM as it ate into the U.S. group's market share on its home turf.

Toyota, maker of the Camry sedan -- the United States' most popular car -- said on Tuesday its global vehicle sales rose 9 percent to 2.35 million units in the quarter.

The tally includes cars sold under the Lexus luxury brand and the youth-oriented Scion badge, as well as vehicles from units Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd..

GM, which sells cars and trucks under a dozen brands including Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Opel and Saab, sold 2.26 million units during the same period, for a 3 percent rise.

``Toyota has had aggressive new model introductions all over the world,'' said Koji Endo, an auto analyst at Credit Suisse Securities in Tokyo.

``It's achieved growth everywhere in the world, whereas GM's significant growth has only been in China,'' he said.

Toyota has won fans around the world with affordable cars seen as reliable, durable and fuel-efficient, while GM continued to rely heavily on high-margin but gas-guzzling vehicles to pull it out of financial difficulties.

To keep up with soaring demand, Toyota is adding production capacity in almost every corner of the globe, from San Antonio to St. Petersburg, with an internal goal of taking 15 percent of the global car market by 2010.

GM estimated its share in the first quarter at 13.0 percent, down one-tenth of a percentage point from a year ago.

This year, Toyota has plans to sell 9.34 million vehicles as a group, up 6 percent from 2006. GM does not provide a global sales forecast.

The breakneck pace of growth, however, has presented some hiccups for Toyota in recent years as vehicle recalls climbed to record levels.

Last year Toyota recalled more than a million vehicles in Japan and 760,000 in the United States, raising concerns that the company was stretching itself too thin too fast.

After a series of high-profile recalls including a legal probe into past recall practices, President Katsuaki Watanabe publicly vowed last year to step up Toyota's quality vigilance, assigning two executive vice presidents to oversee the effort.

``The number of recalls remains high,'' Credit Suisse's Endo said. ``Toyota has managed to keep a generally high level of quality standards, but how it copes over the next few years is yet to be seen.''

While sales volume is the most common yardstick for a carmaker's size, Toyota dwarfs its rival in almost every other measure. Its market capitalization, at $225 billion, is more than 12 times that of GM's.

Toyota expects to post a net profit of 1.55 trillion yen ($13 billion) for the business year ended last month, probably more than any Japanese company, while GM is struggling to make money. It lost $3 billion in 2006 and $12 billion the year before.

In another article I read this week, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said overtaking GM was not Toyota's first priority.

"Our goal has never been to sell the most cars in the world," Nolasco said. "We simply want to be the best in quality. After that, sales will take care of themselves."

Like a Rock...my ass!

[ra24man]

Here's another good one...

Originally Posted by Ohio.com

Toyota rise plus for U.S. economy
Amid pain from decline of Detroit's Big Three, foreign rivals improve vehicles, bring plants, jobs

Doron Levin

Bloomberg News

The report that Toyota Motor Corp. surpassed No. 1 General Motors Corp. in worldwide sales in the first quarter shouldn't be viewed as evidence of U.S. industrial decline.

Automaking in the United States might never have been stronger. That's not

to say General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Corp. aren't struggling, and they won't soon, if ever, dominate the industry as they once did.

For long-term owners of the stocks and bonds of the U.S. automakers, not to mention for their workers and for their communities, the relative loss of dominance has been immense.

Detroit and Michigan are ground zero in terms of fallout from the decline of the U.S. automakers. The tax base is decreasing, municipal deficits are soaring and the United Auto Workers union is looking terminally ill.

But for the U.S. economy, the rise of non-U.S. automakers -- especially the new No. 1 -- has been, on balance, a positive. From 1986 to 2006, vehicle production in the United States beyond the Big Three domestic companies grew to 3.37 million from 426,000, while imports by those automakers to the United States have fallen to 2.55 million from 3.47 million, according to the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group. U.S. production by Detroit makers shrank by 3.7 million in the same period.

GM, Ford and Chrysler employed 377,000 U.S. workers at the end of last year, compared with 95,000 employed by Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and other foreign automakers, according to the Automotive Policy Trade Council, a trade group.

Although comparisons are rough, the numbers imply that last year the U.S. automakers needed almost four times as many workers to build twice as many (6.84 million) vehicles as the foreign companies operating in the United States. The disparity hints at one of Detroit's ailments: bloat.

Of all the non-U.S. automakers, Toyota, Japan's biggest automaker, has most famously exemplified an efficient, disciplined approach to manufacturing, one that is studied and applied broadly by U.S. hospitals, libraries, automakers and businesses of all types.

``We've learned about using common processes and methods from Toyota,'' said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. ``Everywhere their DNA is the same. GM has struggled with commonality, though it's been working on the concept since the early 1990s.''

Anand Sharma, chief executive officer of TBM Consulting in Durham, N.C., said 60 percent of the clients he teaches about the Toyota Production System are not in the auto industry. U.S. businesses ``had become very complacent,'' he said. ``Toyota provides improvement right away.''

GM, Ford and Chrysler all acknowledge, however ruefully, the positive impact that Toyota and others have had on vehicle quality and customer satisfaction. But Detroit hasn't been able to catch its rivals by learning their tricks and beating them at their own game.

Individually and through the Automotive Policy Trade Council, Detroit automakers instead complain that Japan manipulates its currency, keeping the value artificially low against the dollar to make imports cheaper for U.S. buyers. Among luxury sedans, the weak yen results in an $8,280 cost subsidy for cars such as Toyota's Lexus LS460.

Perhaps. But it's hard to imagine the United States will pressure its most important ally in the Far East to revalue its currency just to make life easier for Detroit's automakers. Foreign automakers are creating jobs in the United States, investing in new plants and winning friends in Congress.

As more plants owned by foreign automakers have opened in the United States, the economic benefits are being felt in smaller, once-rural communities, especially in the South. Examples are Canton, Miss. (Nissan Motor Co.); Greer, S.C. (BMW); West Point, Ga. (Kia Motors Corp.); and Montgomery, Ala. (Hyundai Motor Co.)

Toyota in February said it will build its next assembly plant in Tupelo, Miss., best known as the birthplace of Elvis Presley.

``These towns have good skilled work forces, and the people value the jobs,'' said Mike Stanton, who heads the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers. The UAW has failed in every effort to organize U.S. workers at the foreign-owned auto plants; that has helped keep labor costs from ballooning as they have in Detroit.

In addition to passing GM in global vehicle sales, Toyota is poised to steam past Ford to become No. 2 in the United States. Then, the big milestone will be to grab the top U.S. spot. Toyota has a bit less than 16 percent of the U.S. market, GM a bit less than 23 percent.
Doron Levin is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

[Gaslight]

And this still won't be enough to wake up GM. They deserve everything that they have coming. Up until 3 years ago I bought a new GM vehicle every 3 years. They have lost my business.

Jake

[Billyburnout]

I'm getting rid of my GM in favor of my Toyota.