While much of the auto world’s attention was fixed on the Paris Motor Show, US manufacturers were keeping an eye on the Texas state fair, where Toyota was rolling out a new pickup truck. Texas is ground zero in the pickup wars that are about to break out across the broad American landscape.
Thus, representatives from General Motors, Ford Motor Co and German-US DaimlerChrysler were all on hand for the annual State Fair of Texas in Dallas, which has become one of the biggest stages for new pickup trucks.
Toyota…has built a brand-new factory dedicated to full-size pickup trucks deep in the heart of Texas. Once the new plant in San Antonio is fully operational, Toyota expects to sell as many as 200,000 pickups annually, according to Brian Smith, Toyota corporate manager for truck operations. The plant is scheduled to open in November and dealers are slated to begin selling the trucks in February.
Toyota also is planning its largest advertising campaign ever in the US to promote the new Texas-built version of the Tundra.
The autoblog.com folks produced an overwhelming chunk of coverage from the Chicago Auto Show — a truckload! I guess you could produce a compendium of matching photos of nervous dealers for the American brands.
Sean Hannity was hired recently to promote GM car sales to Conservative Americans who want to be patriotic and by an American made car or truck. Funny thing is, that with GM and Ford building so many plants outside the US, Toyota is becoming more of an American car with all their plants in America, incuding Detroit and, can you believe, Bush’s Texas, manned by Americans!
GM plans on spending half Billion dollars in a *marketing* campaign to sell their new trucks. Ford’s turnaround plan *hinges* on it’s pickup truck business. They all sent these highflyers to watch how Toyota is doing this, and this is all they could come up with? How about building a better vehicle? How about figuring out how to build the trucks *here* and still managing to make a profit? How about transferring some of this knowledge into other vehicle types?
Why is the greater Detroit area filled with these research outfits, yet GM and Ford are still clueless?v Its frustrating, to say the least. My next truck is likely to be a Tundra – at least I’ll know *where* it was built.
Time to sell your GM and Ford stock and buy Toyota’s… Toyota is going to bury them.
#2
Why is the greater Detroit area filled with these research outfits, yet GM and Ford are still clueless?
Very true. They had the resources and the knowledge of how to make better cars, but yet they didn’t. After all, shorter lifespan of the cars, sells more cars… at least that’s the theory they had, which worked when you didn’t have good competition. Now, the Japanese manufacturers beat them in both quality and price.
I have no need for a full size pickup at present but if I ever do, you can bet it will be the Toyota…
Tom
How does this reflect on Toyota as being a “green” company? Shouldn’t they be focusing on making fuel-efficent, clean cars? OR do they not care? OR is crushing GM and Ford part of their plan so everyone will have green cars?
Ford Launches 2008 Super Duty Trucks at Texas State Fair
http://car-reviews.automobile.com/news/ford-launches-2008-super-duty-trucks-at-texas-state-fair/2106/
Well, I think Toyota is simply going after the pickup truck segment because it is in fact a very popular product. If pickups just suddenly went out of favor with the American public, GM and Ford would probably collapse just about as suddenly. All of this cutting of employees and production is probably just an acknowledgment that GM and Ford are in fact going to focus on larger vehicles only – which mightn’t be a bad idea if they improve the quality (and build them all here).
Toyota is still missing the boat by not producing a diesel or heavy-duty model. It is hard to maintain a fleet business without a 3/4 ton model–not that Toyota was any good at the fleet business–they got out of the chassis-cab market over 10 years ago. I also think that biodiesel has many distinct environmental advantages over ethanol and synthetic (coal derived) gasoline.
Toyota wins on quality. I just don’t understand how Ford and GM can steadily lose market share, without ever figuring out how to compete on quality. This has been going on for three decades! Whose fault is it: management or the unions?
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