Iceman

I actually wrote off GM after they destroyed the Saturn experiment. That was, IMO, the last gasp of a dying automaker. They really had something special there--a from-the-ground-up attempt to beat the Japanese at their own game by designing an affordable, high-quality car that blended looks, performance, reliability, and good customer service. When it didn't earn back the huge initial investment in a ridiculously short three or four years, the GM bean counters took over, eliminated the fire and spirit of the original Saturn cadre, and started cutting corners. It was a remarkably quick decline in both build quality and customer service once Saturn became just another GM division (does anyone remember the early 90's when GM ads that listed all their automotive divisions did NOT include Saturn?).

To me, if GM could screw something so wonderful up so quickly, they are hopeless.

Vegassc400

You just explained the difference between an American company and Japanese company in that post. The American business plan has always focused on the short term. The Japanese have 100 year business plans. Which one do you think will be more focused on the future?

marshall, I was one of those happy 1989 B2200 Mazda owners. Great little truck. I abused the crap out of it and it kept on runnin.

mmarshall

Yes....what GM did to Saturn is nothing short of criminal. The problem is that the Saturn people have been so naive that they haven't noticed what's happening and therefore have not fought back. They've just sat there like lambs and taken it. I was a Saturn owner myself about 6-7 years ago....an SL2 was my second car........and I watched the company slowly start to sink in 1999 with the introduction of the "Non-Saturn" L-series and go steadily downhill ever since. The latest....and projected...Saturn products don't even have plastic panels anymore.

mmarshall

You then know what I mean about those being good trucks....and without the bed-rust problems of the Toyota trucks of the period. Now...the Ranger clones that Ford stuck Mazda with a couple of years later were not bad trucks by any means, (they were certainly better than the Chevy S-10) but they were (and are) clearly not in the league, quality-wise, of the 1989 truck you owned.

Gojirra99

Toyota the Juggernaut

by Jeremy Cato

"The enemy of Toyota is Toyota," said Ken Tomikawa, the Toyota Canada president who has driven Japan's number one automaker to over 10 per cent of the Canadian new vehicle market. The goal for the rest of the decade is much grander. In 2004, it was revealed that Toyota was working away at a new strategy called Global 15: Toyota intends to achieve a 15 per cent global share between 2006 and 2010 and thus become the number one automaker in the world (General Motors has about 14.7 per cent of global share). That would represent a big jump from Toyota's current 11.3 per cent share of global sales.


Ken Tomikawa, President Toyota Canada, with FTX Hybrid V8 pickup, Toronto Auto Show, February 2005. Click image to enlarge
Tomikawa's point, made during a dinner to discuss the company's aggressive truck strategy, is that as Toyota goes down this path towards becoming the world's biggest car company, it will run into trouble only if arrogance and complacency set in and grip the company.

Don't think it isn't possible. As recently as the end of the last decade, Ford Motor Co. had a corporate strut perfectly reflected in since-ousted CEO Jacques Nasser. Then the bottom fell out of Ford's plans and US$6.45 billion in losses ensued, from which Ford has not yet recovered.

Go back a little further, and recall the hip condescension of Chrysler Corp. during the heart of the Bob Lutz/Bob Eaton years. And GM? What was good for GM was good for the country, right?


Look at those three now. Ford and GM don't make money selling cars at all; if not for their finance arms, both would be in big trouble. Since being taken over by Daimler-Benz, Chrysler has fallen to the depths and is only now showing a few signs of returning to consistent profitability. But we can't be sure Chrysler's is a lasting recovery yet.

Tomikawa, like all the other senior bosses at Toyota, is concerned about arrogance. He says he worries about the new, young, swaggering employees who have never experienced bad times and who seem to be comfortable with the idea that Toyota is just naturally superior to all the other automakers.

"This is a problem we must address in Toyota," says the hard-driving Tomikawa, a short, intense sales and marketing executive who loves his golf and, alas, his cigarettes.

Toyota, of course, is on a global roll. It is increasing its market share steadily, it enjoys a remarkable degree of environmental cachet, its Lexus luxury car division has been a leader in quality for more than a decade, and the corporate coffers are full with some US$30 billion in cash and equivalent reserves, driven by profits such as the nearly US$11 billion Toyota earned in fiscal 2003. Toyota is the world's most profitable per-vehicle volume car company, period.

The arrogance of success is a real worry, though. Detroit's automakers have suffered from it and so have Europe's.

Consider Volkswagen. Through the 1990s, Europe's largest automaker was a shining example of smart platform engineering to produce a multitude of good products. This year VW is on track to lose as much as US$1 billion in North America alone. Analysts suggest that VW wasted resources on a bold but ultimately unwise attempt to get into the luxury car business with models like the Phaeton.

Mercedes, meanwhile, is battling with well-documented quality issues. Some suggest they are a byproduct of aggressive global expansion plans - the takeover of Chrysler, the purchase of a controlling interest in Mitsubishi -- that have led to senior management diverting attention from the core Mercedes brand. Apparently, Mercedes cannot simply run itself after all.

Tomikawa says Toyota CEO Fujio Cho warns constantly about what he calls "big company disease." They both recognize it, but preventing it from infecting the organization is a different matter.

To inoculate the company from complacency, Toyota is moving ahead aggressively with radical improvements to what are already the world's best product development and manufacturing systems. Officials say that when a massive wave of new models begins arriving this year, the company will have found ways to save a staggering 30 per cent in development and manufacturing costs over the current generation of models.


Ken Tomikawa, President Toyota Canada, with FTX Hybrid V8 pickup, Toronto Auto Show, February 2005. Click image to enlarge
Insiders say Toyota's manufacturing engineers believe they have devised a new system to enable products to be built on assembly lines half the length of today's. This will be the system Toyota uses when it opens a new truck plant in Texas in 2006.

Then there is the matter of styling. It is a significant weakness. The truth is that for the most part, Toyotas are considered bland, uninspired designs - in other words, transportation appliances.

That will change under a new styling mandate. Design now has a higher status within Toyota; no longer does it fall under engineering. Moreover, Toyota is hiring new designers from around the world.

Tomikawa, however, insists that in all this, Toyota is not focusing on surpassing other car companies; that is not the idea. Toyota will worry about itself - focus on its own worst enemy, the one within.

It may work. Don't forget that about two decades ago, Toyota quietly set out to gain 10 per cent of global market share. It has long since passed that target and Global 15 is next.

For the rest of the world's automakers, this is not good news.

As John Wormald, a partner with auto-researcher Autopolis in London said is a recent Barron's article, Toyota "the powerhouse is about to erupt. Toyota is going to put Detroit and the world's other large car companies through the meat grinder."



Jeremy Cato is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. He is a columnist and feature writer for the Globe & Mail newspaper and his articles are syndicated to a variety of other publications.

source : canadiandriver.com

yoji6365

Hows this for a way to turn around a faltering auto company.

1. Hire people who will commit to a long term contract
2. Change management philosophy to make a better car, not a quarterly stock report.
3. Forget about stockholders and turning profits for the next 5 years.
4. Focus on improving quality and processes, not on how to downsize the workforce and
beef up their annual bonuses.
5. Change management's salary based on customer satisfaction scores, car quality scores.
Most important:

Make a better product, and people will buy it.


Any thoughts?