The Big Three Fear That Toyota Is Becoming The Big One - NYT

DETROIT, May 19 - "Toyota may not quite be the world's largest automaker, based on vehicle sales, but it is firmly buckled in the industry's driver's seat. That reality was reinforced last week when Toyota reported $10.2 billion in earnings for its latest fiscal year, which ended in March, the most ever made in a single year by a Japanese company.

Toyota made more than General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler combined. In fact, its earnings were more than double the combined earnings of those companies in their most recent fiscal years. "It has the kind of momentum in the market that hasn't been seen since the glory years of G.M.'s heyday," said Peter M. DeLorenzo, an industry consultant, in a commentary on his Web site, autoextremist .com.

Consistent profits have allowed Toyota to bankroll environmental technologies, like hybrid engine systems, and take risks, like starting a youth-focused brand, Scion, he said. And it has increased the pressure on everyone else.

Toyota's recent earnings report coincided with an unusually blunt speech to the Detroit Economic Club last week from the chief executive of one of the domestic industry's largest suppliers, Richard E. Dauch of American Axle and Manufacturing. "Like it or not, Detroit is in the cross hairs of world automotive competition," he said in his speech, adding that "never before in my nearly 40-year automotive career have I seen General Motors, Ford and the Chrysler Group all losing market share at the same time" in the United States."

EDIT

The Big 3 have all but foresaken the car market and have focused on trucks and SUVs. Their product quality has been less than stellar, especially when you look at Ford.

When it comes to SUVs no one in their right mind would purchase an Explorer when they can get the Highlander.

It will be interesting to see what impact falling truck and SUV sales has on the Big 3's lobbying efforts in DC. Will they press the gov't to lower gas prices or begin to offer insane discounts on the vehicles?

get years ahead of them. Of the three, only Ford has a hybrid vehicle (The Ford Escape, an SUV).

Toyota's hybrid technology has been on the market at least 3 years longer.

The big 3 are playing catch up again. It pisses me off because I know we have good engineers in the US but suits and bean-counters think marketing is more important than quality.

Of course it's really the big 2 now. DaimlerChrysler is a German company.

Good grief. In the future all gasoline powered vehicles will be using that tech to make them more efficient, imho.

Ford has licencing agreeements of a bunch of Toyota Hybrid patents and they're using the same basic hybrid scheme, but there are no Toyota built or designed parts on the Escape.

Kudos to Ford for being the first US manufacturer to (finally) market a hybrid. I just don't think the patent issue is a big deal - if you look back you could say the same thing about early airplanes and the Wright patents.

Edit: I guess it is technically correct that Ford may not own all of the rights to the technology that it uses in the Escape. This is common. Apple, for example, doesn't own the rights to bsd which OSX is based on.

technology that very similar to Toyota's, allowing Ford to avoid any legal problems in the future. See the article below.

Ford Disputes View That Its Hybrid Is a Toyota: Doron Levin

April 22 (Bloomberg)

On March 9 Ford Motor and Toyota Motor Corp. announced they had signed a licensing agreement that, among its other provisions, allows Ford to use technology protected by 20 Toyota patents covering hybrid technology.

<<<snip>>>>

As reported by most news organizations, the stories stated that Toyota had agreed to ``sell'' or ``lease'' its hybrid technology to Ford.

<<<snip>>>>

Because some of the processes Ford developed were similar to Toyota's, Harmon explained, company lawyers decided to pay Toyota a royalty to avoid a potential patent conflict. The amount wasn't disclosed.

<<<snip>>>

(Irv) Miller (Toyota's group vice president for communications) acknowledged the accuracy of Ford's version of events regarding the patent agreement. ``They thought their software was close enough that they wanted to protect themselves,'' he said.


The article also includes some very snippy, "sour-grapes" comments from GM, which may be doing its best to paint Ford as buying the Toyota system "off the shelf," which Ford did not do.

Also, the 2-wheel front drive Escape with the hybrid engine is expected to get 30 highway and 35-40 city.

The URL for this piece is so long that my pathetic AOL can't show the whole thing. However, the article is easily retrievable by Google and can be found at the Bloomburg website.







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See my post #42.

According to the article cited there, Toyota offered its hybrid technology wholesale on license to GM. GM and Toyota have worked joint ventures together, like the Corolla/Prizm twins, and I believe are also producing jointly the Matrix twins. It makes sense that Toyota would offer the hybrid technology to its partner, GM, and not GM's rival Ford.

Ford took out modification licenses on 20 of the over 200 Toyota patents on the hybrid because Ford's self-developed technology was extremely similar to Toyota's. The reason for the licenses has been confirmed by Toyota. Otherwise, Ford has been working on hybrid technology in its own development shop for several years. Ford is clearly behind Toyota, but it is also clearly ahead of GM and DaimlerChrysler.

I seem to recall that Nissan has licensed the Toyota technology at least in part for its products. Ford's view is that by engineering its own technology, it has an edge in intellectual capital over those companies that license Toyota or Honda technology. Time will tell if Ford is correct.

Yes, U.S. automakers have been stumbling around since the 1973-4 oil shock, especially with regard to the small car market in the U.S. However, Ford does sell quite a few cars in Europe, like the Focus, which, I believe, was originally developed and sold in Europe first. I understand that different versions of the Focus are in production or development in Europe now.

There were also quite a few Escorts running around Europe in years past. In a trip I took in 1995, I rented a European Escort in Sweden. It was a great little car--lots of pep and reasonably comfortable. I learned that it had the 1.8 liter high-performance engine available on the Escort GT and Tracer LTS models in the U.S., not the regular U.S. models which were not as sprightly. Why Ford sold the regular U.S. models at all here is beyond me.

The German Opel is GM's European brand. I owned two of them in the '70s and '80s--they were lots of fun to drive, particularly the Manta, but they never caught on here.

So instead of performing their own research and development, Ford is going to use Toyota's.

This begs the question, why go to the supermarket for milk when you can get it right from the cow?

I love my Prius.

.
.
.

products,

and the financial demise of the US looms on the horizon - -

What was that line from Die Hard, Tagahoomi(sp?) or someone like that

"We couldn't get even with bombs, so we did it with transistor radios"

something like that? :shrug:

If there is any truth to the adage:

"What goes around, comes around", . .

The US has "asked" for it . .

Payback's a bitch.

but lots of different vehicles with smaller form factors than
the ones you see in the U.S.

The U.S. market is not the only one.

The japs know how to make cars that last a long time.

:)

It's actually expensive in Iraq, what with all those pesky insurgents taking out refineries, pipelines, etc., not to mention Halliburton's price gouging.

But of course UAE has none of those things, so: Is it 30 cents a gallon? Do they still give you free maps? :-)

Isn't it funny how the Giants of Industry love free markets when it benefits them, but as soon as someone else does something better, and profits from it, they start screaming bloody murder?

I used to be a loyal Dodge Dart driver. I had three of them, and if the first one hadn't been in a flood 2 weeks after I bought it, I might still be driving it. It was a 1963 Dart with push-button transmission.

Those were great cars. They ran forever, and they were economical for that time -- I got about 15-20mpg in them. Of course in those days, and this was during and after the 1970's oil shocks, gas was still under a dollar a gallon.

They stopped making the Dart after 1974, and replaced it with one of the worst cars in history: The Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare line.

After the oil shocks, the Big Three were unprepared for the move towards economy cars, so they tried to compete with the VW Beetle, the Honda Civic, the Datsun 210 (later the Nissan Sentra), and the Toyota Corolla with such immortals of automotive crap as the Dodge Omni and the Chevrolet Vega -- and of course the legendary exploding Ford Pinto.

I've been a Civic driver since 1990, and recently we bought a Toyota Corolla, because the Civic just isn't as good as it used to be. DAMN, that Corolla is a great little car. Zippy as hell, great on gas, smooth ride.

Toyota is a company that's very responsive to driver demand; and indeed, can see trends coming. They already had the Prius in the pipeline when everyone else was just talking about hybrids. It's a company that makes a good, solid, reliable, quality vehicle. Last time I looked, that was a GOOD thing.

It was crap.

ran great, but it needed a new tranny every 6 months!!

The Volare was an unbelievable piece of shit. A friend drove one in high school until he managed to flip it on top of a small tree (and walk away). That thing used to scare the heck out of me. The transmission also failed and he lost reverse gear after owning it for a short while.

The Japanese makers keep eating Detroit's lunch due to Detroit's problems and mindset. SUV & truck profits have been keeping GM, Ford etc alive, therefore they plan on always operating that way even though hybrids & diesels will be the powerplants of choice for the next 20 years or so.

Followed by a 1973 Dodge Dart - woo! Automotive excitement!!

Damn things ran forever. I finally had to give up on the Dart in 1988 at 249,000 miles when the rustout became terminal. The mechanics who towed it away pulled the engine and sold it to someone else, and for all I know, the unstoppable slant-6 is puttering away somewhere on America's highways.

and maintenance is zero and it will go forever. What more do I ask?

It doesn't take long for the word to get out.

Will be a Toyota truck. I can't wait to kiss my TOTAL PIECE OF SHIT FORD TAURUS goodbye. I regret the day I bought it insead of a Toyota (although my mechanic does not!).

As in quality. I had a 95 Camry and of the six or seven cars I've owned including those made by Ford and Honda, it was by far and away the best. Just an unbelievably great car. Had a V6, got great mileage and was very, very peppy.

My current 2000 Accord is pretty good,and knock on wood is still running strong with 140k on it but it doesn't match the Camry in terms of engineering and overall drivability. Sometimes I regret giving it up.

I'll never buy another American car -- ever. Too many bad experiences. My Honda was made in Marysville, Ohio but it still has the Japanese engineering and quality control. Plus hopefully buying it helps employ people in Ohio. Best of both worlds really.

I have driven it through the desert, up and down mountains, on remote forest roads, everywhere and the thing just keeps going! It has 110,000 miles on it. I am trying to talk my sister into trading her Durango in for a Toyota, although because of the high gas prices, she probably won't get a lot for it. Thankfully it is paid off.

Put nearly 200,000 miles on the thing and it still wouldn't die.

Amazing car, even over twenty years ago.

Just like 1973--the Arab oil boycott arrived and nailed these nincompoops with their crapola gas-guzzlers just as Honda brought out the Civic... same scenario--limitless cheap oil suddenly gone, wrong product, wrong idea, someone else thought, designed, and built ahead.

Morans!

...over GREAT little cars at LOW prices. Now they are sending over GREAT little cars at HIGH prices.

I love my Prius! :)

...to get one about a year ago. They said I would have to wait six months so I blew it off. Little did I know...

far more superior and have more quality than any cars on the market. I personally like Honda myself but have drive a few Toyotas and they were great. The absolute shittiest car I have ever gotten behind the wheel is a Dodge Neon. Drove my friends brand new one and the ride sucked, that was a year ago and now he just spent $700 to fix it.

Once Toyota's big trucks start becoming more popular I think they will easily overtake the big three.

But they skimped on the engine and interior niceties. Worse, in 15 years they have barely changed the design.

bit of a shock getting used to a V-6 and less gas mileage than my Civic, but I can deal. This came loaded, no options except rims for just over $30K. Quality-wise, the only thing better is a Porsche!

just a thought... bigger isn't always better.

Why anyone still buys Ford, GM and DaimlerChrylser vehicles is beyond belief. People actually think that those are "American" and that Toyota isn't.

I love my Camry. It was made in Georgetown Kentucky. I laugh at people who have to fix their Fords every few months. They don't realize that the parts are made in China. Toyota also has Chinese parts but try to have as many American as possible, that's why Toyota parts are more expensive.

And outsourcing 'American car makers' have no basis for saying "buy American." For that matter, chances are that our family's Toyota was made, at least in part, in California.

I began to doubt Detroit's grip on reality back in the 1990s when I saw on TV for Honda followed by an ad for one of the Big Three. The Honda ad touted a new steering mechanism that allowed the rear wheels to turn in tandem with the front wheels. A major jump in automobile engineering, I thought. A few commercials later a Big Three ad was shown that touted "pin striping" as "standard equipment."

I knew right then a there that the US auto industry was no longer the leaders in automobile manufacturing...

My first car was a 1984 Toyota Corrolla. I had it for 10 years, and it had over 264,000 miles on it before I traded it in for a 1994 Saturn SL 2, which I also had for 10 years and got 332,501 miles on it before I traded it in this year for a 2001 Saturn L-200.

Saturn used Toyota as a model for its corporate structure, and Saturn had done very well for the first few years of its existance but garnered the ire of the unions and the other GM car divisions, which were based on the old US Business model.

Oddly, Toyota built it's corporate structure on the theories of an American economist, Dr. William Demming, whose theory favored an horizontal structure and partnership model over the pyramidal structure and dominator model favored by US corporations in the 1950's. Demming could not get any American companies in the 1950's to use his theories, but post-World War II Japan was open to suggestion and welcomed Demming.

...and definitely overpriced. My 1981 and 1978 Datsuns were harsh rust buckets with inferior electrical systems to the Packard Electric and Delco apparatus in my GM cars. One Datsun's tires wore out in 22,000 miles.

In my 270,000 miles of motoring, most of it in American-branded cars, I have never been stranded due to mechanical problems. My two new American models had all of five recalls, which were mere inconveniences. My 2000 Ford is perfect, except for the recalls. My GM auto needed four replacement ECMs. Yes, that would be inferior quality. Let me ask you this:

Is a little amount of perceived quality more important than keeping jobs and business in your country? Do you know those United Auto Workers are hugely funding the campaigns of Democratic candidates? They paid for $165 of my Camp Wellstone training last year.

The only cars that ever broke down on me were the Ford, Chrysler, and Volvo. The Chrysler, REPEATEDLY. Plus it was subjected to recall after recall. Plus it was a gas guzzler. The Ford was just plain dangerous. My mom's Ford NEVER worked right, and she finally traded it in (it was only 2 years old!) for a Toyota Camry.

We are now a Toyota and Subaru family.

1989

$15,000 Subaru Wagon like my boss bought
$13,000 Chevrolet Celebrity Wagon that I purchased

2000

$30,000 Toyota Sienna minivan
$22,400 Ford Windstar minivan that I purchased

My boss junked the Subaru when it was nine years old, because it was all rust. I kept driving my Celebrity until it was 13--I only unloaded it because I did not have garage space.

I've bought 5 cars in my lifetime - 4 were Honda Civics and one a BMW 5 series. The Beemer was great but the savings with the Honda are phenomenal.

We Dems are famous for being pro-labor and for wailing about the American jobs being outsourced to India and beyond, etc. etc., but we draw the line when it affects our own comfort/home/wallet, by golly!;)

Parts for Japanese or European cars can be several times the cost of parts for an American car, especially GM. I'm making a point that Japanese cars aren't cheaper to own or operate.

I'm also disgusted with this anti-US self-loathing that some US consumers have about American cars. It serves no good end to boycott American companies just to punish them, because it hurts American workers ultimately. This extends beyond the assembly workers and parts workers. There are a huge number of jobs associated with the auto and parts industry in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and a few other states. There is a big electronics industry in Detroit, Michigan. All that is based upon the sales of American-branded automobiles.

Toyota makes a great car.

I'm not surprised by this news.