Tekknikal

well the industry-wide trend is towards performance and driving dynamics...so i dont see that as lexus targeting bmw.

who was that directed at?

OC 335d

BMW and Porsche aren't major automakers?

Every post you make you find a way to praise Lexus and find negatives in other brands.

Tekknikal

porsche? maybe...but they're far more than a 911. they do SUVs and will have a sedan soon. they also own 30% of vw.
bmw? thats silly

geko29

And why does that matter? Why does a company that sells 1.2M vehicles per year have to make more total profit than a company that sells 9M vehicles, or else it's a failure? Total profit is just ONE way to rate a company, and Toyota clobbers BMW 3:1. Profit per vehicle is another, and BMW destroys Toyota 4:1. Profit per employee is yet another, where Toyota holds a 9% edge. There are dozens of others that I don't care to research at the moment. Bottom line, however, is that both companies are doing FAR better than industry averages.

Repeatedly saying that total profit is the only thing that matters does not make it true. Dr. Pepper is not a failure because Coke and Pepsi have higher profits.

AzNMpower

Company size isn't the point of this thread. Lexus is a division of Toyota, which we all know is the #1 automaker in the world. On the other hand, BMW is a relatively small company that's still 50% privately owned by the Quandt family, and not huge in terms of market cap. Two different companies.

LexFather

Not at you or at anyone. What I am saying is if people are that upset, maybe e-mail the writer of the article.

The IS and GS (less successfully) have always targeted BMW. The ES and LS have always targeted Benz.

XeroK00L

The LS "competes directly" with the 3 and the 5? This is just plain utterly ridiculous.

spwolf

umphpjhfdfdfi?

Last year BMW's profit was 5.xx per car... Toyota's was 8.xx....

Does Nissan even make money with sales down everywhere? PSA's profits were something like 1.x% per car, I doubt that Renault-Nissan was any better.

5.xx% is very profitable... but nowhere as profitable as Toyota in general.

And Porsche just makes boatloads, which is why they could buy VW.

spwolf

As I said before, Toyota has better profits per car than BMW. Yes, thats global Toyota, with all those Yaris's and Corolla's.... Only Porsche (out of major manufacturers) makes more profit per car than Toyota...

LexFather

I merged the 2 threads together as they are related.

geko29

Toyota made a 6.5% profit, as a percentage of sales and before "extraordinary items". BMW's margin was 6.4%.

But something truly interesting is on that first link. Toyota has the LOWEST gross profit as a percentage of sales among the 4 major Japanese automakers (including Mazda), by a fairly wide margin. However, their net profits are the HIGHEST, by a similarly comfortable margin.

TRDFantasy

I guess I forgot that Porsche and BMW annually sell millions and millions of mass market economy cars .

To each their own. This totally depends on what your definition of "major" automaker is. By most industry standards, BMW and Porsche are not major automakers. I am not simply stating my opinion, but I am basically implying what the industry definition of a "major" automaker is.

TRDFantasy

Let me state AGAIN, profit per car does not matter unless you know the total sales volume. If imaginary automaker A makes $10,000 profit per car, yet only sells 1,000 cars per year, what good is that? You may believe that imaginary company A is a very successful company in your opinion, but the fact of the matter is imaginary company A would not have the resources or expertise to compete with the world's biggest and best automakers. Despite their stellar profit per car figure, their total net profit would make it impossible to aggressively compete across many model segments. Then you would compare to imaginary company B, which makes only $2,000 profit per car, yet sells 1,000,000 units annually.

By themselves, none of the figures you mentioned matter. Profit-per-car, profit per employee, or profit margins *by themselves* do not matter, but when all of these figures are looked at together along with others including total net profit, then you can accurately gauge the success of an automaker.

Plus, Toyota does well in all the figures you mentioned. BMW or Porsche may beat Toyota in some of these figures, but when all figures are taken as a whole, Toyota comes out on top.

There is a reason why Toyota has been, and continues to be looked at as a model automaker.

Going back to the original point of the thread, I sincerely and truly hope BMW takes this profit drop seriously and takes proactive steps to increase the company's competitiveness.

geko29

But we DO know total sales volume AND total profits. Toyota sells 7.5x as many vehicles as BMW (9M vs. 1.2M), but only makes 3x as much profit($12B vs $4B). Both companies are in great shape and are among the most profitable automakers in the world.

And BMW doesn't HAVE to compete across multiple markets, because they don't WANT to. They doesn't have the huge presence in heavy trucking that Toyota does. They don't sell pickup trucks. They're barely in the sport compact market with Scion (with the mini), and they're not in the sub-economy market with Daewoo at all. They barely overlap with the Toyota brand. They pick a few markets they do well in and stick to them. Sport sedans, roadsters, luxury cars and SUVs

You keep trying to play both sides of the field. They don't sell every class of vehicle on the planet, so they're a "niche", "boutique" brand, ergo not as good as Toyota. But then with only 1/3 of the total profits of Toyota, they don't have enough free capital to invest in R&D into dozens of markets in which they do not ever intend to have a presence, so they're a failure.

So one win (total profits), one loss (profit per vehicle) and one tie (profit per employee) is a crushing victory? Ok.

By your standard, there are only two ways BMW can be healthy. Either they sell 3 times as many cars as they do now (so Toyota only sells 2.5x as many) with the same profit per vehicle, or triple their profit per vehicle (so it's 7.5x what Toyota makes). There's no way a respectable sales volume turning a tidy profit can equal a healthy company unless the absolute total profits are the highest in the world. You win. Toyota rules, every other manufacturer sucks.

TRDFantasy

From the looks of things, it seems that unfortunately some of you only think in absolutes. I never said anywhere BMW was a "failure". I'd like for someone to point out the quote where I mentioned BMW was a failure.

If you read what I said originally, I stated that BMW simply should not be arrogant and should take this profit drop seriously, as well as taking its competitors more seriously. That is when the thread went off-topic about how BMW has nothing to worry about, and how their profits are still stellar.