Trexus

Exactly. Jim Press got too greedy...shoulda stayed with Toyota, at least he'd have a stable job...

LexFather

Please read my next two posts. Another example of me showing you the light

Thank you. While he may have ran into trouble recently with his finances, his track record with Toyota/Lexus was VERY solid and as stated, he left Lexus for the money at Chrysler.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...9/ai_20992600/

A great interview with him, below is only a small portion

Jim Press took the helm of Lexus in the U.S. in 1995. And, though inheriting a sterling brand, Press was charged with the unenviable task of segueing from successful launch to maintenance of the brand's elan and relevance of new models, such as the CS series and the new LX470 sport utility vehicle, to the upscale car buyer, all the while fending off resurgent Euro-imports such as Mercedes and BMW His efforts earned him the promotion earlier this year to senior vice president and general manager of auto operations, a newly-created position that effectively has him overseeing both Toyota and Lexus brands in the United States. Press recently talked with Brandweek senior editor David Kiley about the Lexus formula, and shared his views on the competition and where Toyota is going as a brand.

Also thought this was good...

BW: Acura and Infiniti started with that proverbial clean sheet of paper too, and have never achieved the same clarity of image. Why do you think that is?

JP: When you look at manufacturing processes and capital processes, Toyota ranks among the world's best. We have been able to build our brand on true import luxury benchmarks. Some of these other companies may have thought they could use advertising gimmicks to position parity products that they shared with their volume divisions. The Acura was, and is, a front-wheel-drive V6. The original Infiniti Q45 was a very good car, but then they went back to a shared platform for the second generation. Those companies' business plans may call for both their volume divisions and luxury divisions to overlap in order to achieve profitability. But that's not our plan, and so that is another way we have built clarity. We don't sell a Lexus at the same price point as a Toyota. The lowest price Infiniti is less than the Nissan Maxima and the Acura Integra sells in Honda Accord territory. The Toyota channel takes care of volume selling, period, white Lexus aims to be the highest mark of luxury.

LexFather

A read on why he left Ford.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9v_...0lexus&f=false

pagemaster

No doubt he got greedy. I think Toyota was also pushing for him to leave as he was in charge of the company at the time that the current products from the USA were giving the green light. It appears to me that Press got everything he wanted when he was in charge of NA and now they have a number of issues to deal with.

pagemaster

Once again you ignore anything negative about Lexus/Toyota and put a spin on things...you filter things and put a spin on them to make things look positive. In this case you cite an article that was published in 1998..

You referenced an article from 1998....that was more than 10 years ago. 11 years later, Toyota has an idle Mississippi plant sitting around with no tooling and no production, a Toyota Tundra plant that has capacity for 400,000 units yet only make 60k Tundra's a year, cost cutting on the interiors, a very stale Lexus sedan line up that relies way too much on sales from the ES and IS and no clear cut sport coupe competitor.....this was all done with Jim Press running North American operations...and he split for Chysler when things got bad.

LexFather

Please spare us the accusations when you have continually showed us what you DON'T know with every post. No one disagreed with you, you AGAIN painted a "sky is falling" scenario when Jim Press had a very good record with Lexus/Toyota, otherwise he wouldn't have been THE FIRST AMERICAN TO BE ON THE JAPANESE BOARD. All you did was post the negative. I posted the positive.

Of course you knew that.


What company doesn't rely on entry level car sales? My goodness the 3 series accounts for 40% of BMW sales worldwide. Cheaper cars are the volume sellers. You are presenting a case as if Lexus dropped off the map, wasn't #1 in sales in America still and didn't expand their lineup to include;
GS awd
GS hybrid
IS-F
IS 250 and 350 (no longer one model)
IS AWD
F-sport parts
IS-c
RX hybrid
LS AWD
LS LWB
LS 600h L

While offering more options and more features.

Trexus

Exactly. Look at the Infiniti G, the Mercedes C Class and Audi A3 and A4.

Now Lexus will really dominate the entry level class with the ES 350 (ES 240 in China), IS 250/350, IS 250C/350C, (IS 220d in Europe) and the HS 250h and coming soon the CT 300h/400h...

Mister Two

^Actually MB sells more E-Class than the C-Class on a regular basis, and Porsche sells more 911 than Boxster too.

IS-SV

^ btw, trend is the C-class will be probably outsell the E-class for the year.

Which seems to be normal for this class of car (3/C/IS/A4) today and into the future.

Currently the newly redesigned E is posting slightly higher sales, but after the launch sales will probably level off.

LexFather

I believe the E-class is the volume seller as its a huge fleet car in Europe (Taxicab). It is an anomaly everyone else the entry level car sells the most.

Porsche's best seller is the Cayenne. Its a sports car brand that sells under 100k cars a year and should not be used as an example.

Trexus

I almost forgot that Lexus dominates the entry level SUV category with the RX 350/450h...

encore888

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/auto...azines_fortune

Sounds like he had a mid-life crisis...

jruhi4

^^^ Wow! A very informative, yet sad find.

LexFather

Very sad...life can change so fast....I still wish him the best and he comes out of this for the better.

LexFather

Jim Press saga: A hero falls, hard
Bradford Wernle
and Mark Rechtin
Automotive News | October 26, 2009 - 12:01 am EST

In June, after Fiat had taken control of Chrysler, the new owners sent Jim Press to Washington to defend Chrysler's quick, harsh closing of 789 dealerships.

Press had often been Chrysler's public face, but this was an especially tough assignment. Privately, he had opposed both the scope and terms of the dealership closings. He argued that fewer stores would mean fewer sales.

Nevertheless, Press went before a congressional subcommittee, telling hostile legislators that the store closings were "absolutely necessary" to ensure Chrysler's viability coming out of Chapter 11 reorganization.

Soon after Press returned to Detroit, a highly placed Chrysler source says, he was fired. Press, who declined requests to be interviewed, is expected to leave the company by year end.

That rocky ending was illustrative of Press' troubled tenure of running sales and marketing at Chrysler. In just two years, Press, 63, lost much of the glowing reputation that he earned in 37 years with Toyota.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne is installing his own team at Chrysler. After being harangued by Press to order more cars, many dealers now bristle at the mention of his name. And personal financial problems brought him embarrassing headlines.

It's a stunning change from September 2007, when Press' arrival gave instant credibility to Cerberus Capital Management's rescue plan for Chrysler. Cerberus chief Stephen Feinberg wanted to save the "American icon" he now controlled. And Press, who had helped build Toyota into a North American juggernaut, was a trophy hire.

Press appeared to be made for the job, with a self-effacing public manner that seemed to mix his Kansas boyhood and Toyota's Japanese culture. He was known as a master of sales and dealer relations. Toyota dealers, many of whom grew rich under his watch, rave about him to this day.

From the start, Press made it clear he wanted no part of the Detroit 3's traditional "push" model -- making too many cars, then moving them with heavy incentives and fleet sales. "Why build cars for practice?" he quipped at a press briefing soon after he arrived.

At Toyota, Press had been promoted to a nonoperational job as head of Toyota Motor North America in New York. In his Chrysler job, the man who once said, "I was in love with cars every second" was happy to be back in the thick of the action. He would be doing what he loved most: moving the metal, as co-president of one of the Detroit 3.

Bumpy road
Jim Press at Chrysler
• September 2007: Cerberus hires Press as co-president; Press touts plan to boost product spending
• Spring 2008: Soaring gasoline prices hurt sales of Chrysler trucks, muscle cars
• August 2008: Chrysler Financial stops retail leasing
• Fall 2008: Press increasingly pleads for dealers to order cars; Cerberus kills new product plan; Chrysler seeks federal bailout money, sale to Fiat
• January 2009: Press gets standing ovation from dealers at NADA convention. Days later, on Feb. 5, he appears to threaten dealers who don't order cars; he apologizes
• April 30: Chrysler enters Chapter 11 reorganization
• May 14: Over Press' misgivings, Chrysler revokes franchises of 789 dealers
• June 10: New Chrysler formed as Fiat buys most assets
• June 12: Press testifies to Congress in favor of dealer closings; later terminated by Fiat



Doomed from Day 1?


CEO Bob Nardelli, center, made Jim Press, right, and Tom LaSorda, co-presidents at Chrysler. Despite a few awkward public hugs, the team never meshed, colleagues say.



By some accounts, the seeds of Press' demise were sown before he set foot in his 15th-floor office at Chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich.

Press, whom industry sources say had been discreetly sounding out automakers, including General Motors, about jobs, wound up playing second fiddle to industry outsider Bob Nardelli, a Cerberus adviser and the company's choice as Chrysler's CEO.

Nardelli set up an "office of the chairman," with Press as Mr. Outside, in charge of all sales, marketing and product planning, and Tom LaSorda as Mr. Inside, running engineering and manufacturing organizations. They were co-presidents.

A former Chrysler executive says relations among the executives were tense, particularly between Press and Nardelli. In particular, the executive says, Nardelli resented the good publicity Press received.

Cerberus officials declined comment. Nardelli, who has left Chrysler, still works for Cerberus as an adviser.

Awkward as it was, the arrangement might have worked if Chrysler had had the time and money to revamp its product line. Cerberus pledged to do so but then backed off from product investments in the failing company.

In his first week on the job Press visited three Chrysler dealerships and promised the new Chrysler would spend more money on new products than it had under prior owner Daimler.

"We have been given the opportunity to earmark a ton of money for development of advanced products," Press wrote on a Chrysler blog that first week.

Chrysler staffers, who had been disappointed when former Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard didn't get the top job, were overjoyed.

"When he came onboard, I was ecstatic," says one former Chrysler manager. "I thought we were getting Michael Jordan. I wanted to learn from him."

After the contentious DaimlerChrysler years, dealers were happy, too. Morale soared as inventories dropped during Press' first year. For the first time anyone could remember, Chrysler got serious about slashing dealer stock -- idling five assembly plants in October 2007 and cutting unprofitable fleet sales.

Bill Wallace, owner of the former Wallace Chrysler-Jeep in Stuart, Fla., shared the excitement.

"Every Toyota dealer you knew said Jim Press is a fabulous car guy," Wallace recalls. "In the first year, he was very upbeat. He said, 'Chrysler has been in push position. That's a big difference from what Toyota does.'

"He said we would cut down production. Everybody loved it. He was very aggressive in a lot of the marketing strategy."

But Press and Cerberus had a short honeymoon. By spring of 2008, soaring gasoline prices began to hammer sales of Chrysler's truck-heavy lineup.

Jim Fynes, president of Phil Long Chrysler-Jeep in Denver, a dealership Chrysler rejected in bankruptcy, says he "was really hyped up on this guy" Press.

But Fynes was shocked by a letter Press sent to dealers in June 2008.

In the letter, Press told dealers: "We know we can't take trades on big SUVs and large pickup trucks, so let's encourage our potential customers to sell them privately in order to get them back to buy the new vehicle. Find a different channel."

Fynes saved that letter because he thought it showed an amazingly naive view of the auto retail business. The last thing dealers want to do is encourage customers to take trade-ins elsewhere, Fynes said. "I think it's the most appalling letter I've ever seen in my life."

Chrysler's competitive position continued to deteriorate through the summer of 2008. A key blow came in August of that year, when Chrysler Financial quit financing retail leases after it was unable to renew its full line of credit with outside investors.

Soon afterward, Chrysler announced it had made an operating profit of $1.1 billion in the first half of 2008. At the time, Press criticized "false speculation" about the company's health, adding a bit of classic bravado: "We'd like to be judged as a company on how well we do when we're under pressure. The hardest steel comes from the hottest fire. We're dancing on the sun."'

But Wallace says that in dealer conference calls, Press' tone changed as circumstances became more dire.

"He was saying he really needed dealers to step up to buy more inventory," Wallace says. "There were six or eight of those calls. Each one was another level of desperation."

The man known as Mr. Pull was being forced to push.

Last fall's collapse of financial markets sank Press' hopes of turning Chrysler sales around with hot new products. Cerberus had approved a product plan that included a small car, a hybrid minivan and a new mid-sized car.

But as Chrysler's cash flow worsened throughout 2008, it cut back the plan product by product until there was little left. By late 2008, Chrysler was headed for a federal bailout and bankruptcy.

Still, Press kept trying to rally dealers. Gifted with a photographic memory, he usually speaks without notes and wows audiences. In January 2009, Press brought Chrysler dealers to their feet at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans when he pleaded with them to help save the company.

"He was as believable as Vince Lombardi," Jeffrey Duvall of Duvall Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in Clayton, Ga., said after the meeting. "He is the spokesman Chrysler needs."

Duvall later found his dealership on Chrysler's rejected list.

'We've got a good memory'

Soon after the NADA gathering, Press went too far in pushing dealers to order vehicles. Pleading with dealers on a Feb. 5 conference call, he said: "You have two choices. You can either help us or burn us all down."

Press said dealers who didn't buy cars had "better hope we fail."

"If you decide not to do that," he added, "we've got a good memory of who helped this company make it."

Wallace recalls dealers calling each other afterward to confirm they had heard Press correctly. "That sent shivers up the backs of a lot of Chrysler dealers," he says.

Press apologized, but the damage was done. Many dealers took his comments as a threat. And those who bought the cars they didn't need and then found their stores terminated by Chrysler on May 14 never forgave Press.

Nicholas Parks of Rogers Dodge in Alvin, Texas, a rejected dealership, says the Feb. 5 comments permanently changed his opinion of the man: "The way dealers lost trust in Jim Press, they just all lost it at once."

With his stooped shoulders and sometimes whispery voice, Press presents himself as a humble man. To some people in Toyota, he was known as "the preacher," according to a former colleague. He often thanks journalists and analysts for their "interest in our little car company."

The aw-shucks style was a breath of fresh air in Detroit, used to brassy executives with big egos. But Press was a complex figure, not the same man behind closed doors that he was in public. Press had little patience for Chrysler traditions, his associates say.

Says the former Chrysler manager: "His demeanor was kind of arrogant. I didn't expect some of the personality traits. There were times he made the staff feel like absolute idiots."

Toyota associates describe him as an enigma. The humble exterior was the outer face of a hard-driving, competitive executive — and "one of the five smartest people in the industry," in one former colleague's words. But they also say he tended to claim credit for projects he initially opposed.

The sources also shed light on Press' departure from Toyota, where he had become the first non-Japanese to sit on the corporate board of directors. In 2006, Toyota transferred Press from California to New York, installing him as COO of Toyota Motor North America. The move came after Press divorced his wife of several decades and married a younger woman.

One Toyota source says the divorce "really bothered the Japanese" and made Press unpopular in the tightly knit culture at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. in Torrance, Calif.

"The Toyota family wants everyone to get along, and that includes the wives," the source says. "The wives all know each other."

As the public voice of Chrysler in U.S. Bankruptcy Court and Congress, Press became a lightning rod for perceived injustices of Chrysler's "quick rinse" bankruptcy this spring. The executive who had come in as a dealer champion became the public face of Chrysler's abrupt move to close 789 dealerships.

Dealer Chuck Eddy, Chrysler's NADA representative, gets angry hearing dealers blame Press. He believes that the federal government pressured Chrysler to cut stores -- an assertion that one White House official rejects as "completely untrue."

Eddy, a participant in talks involving Chrysler, NADA and the Obama administration's auto task force, recalls that Chrysler's Feb. 17 viability plan did not call for dealer cuts. Eddy says Press did not want to cut dealers and preferred to let the company's Project Genesis consolidation program reduce the dealer body. Others, including another dealer source, also say Press opposed cuts.

A Chrysler spokesman said he was not aware of whether Press argued against the cuts internally.

Eddy insists it was the administration that pushed hard for the cuts. Eddy says NADA representatives met with Obama task force officials on May 14, the day Chrysler announced the cuts to 789 dealers. Eddy, who is co-owner of Bob & Chuck Eddy Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in Austintown, Ohio, says Press agonized over the closings.

"It's awful what certain dealers have said about him," Eddy says. "He was the messenger. He was the guy who didn't want to cut dealers.

"He anguished over it. We would go to one meeting and another meeting and, honest to goodness, I watched the man age. He was carrying the burden. Jim just shook his head. He said, 'These are the darkest days of my life.'"

Embarrassing headlines in Detroit revealed personal financial darkness, too. Press owes about $1 million in back income taxes to the IRS, and his credit union is suing him for defaulting on a $609,000 loan. He owns four properties and pays his ex-wife Linda $40,000 in alimony and $16,000 a month in child support per month, according to court records.

Hero or traitor?

Mickey Anderson, president of the Omaha, Neb.-based Performance Automotive Group dealerships and a Chrysler National Dealer Council member, defends Press passionately. Anderson calls Press "a hero" and "a genius."

"He had us on the right path, but the company ran out of cash," Anderson says. "When we burned cash, we went bankrupt. You look at the quality of that Ram truck. I am sickened that he won't be with the company any more."

But many Chrysler dealers, who once saw Press as a savior, believe he betrayed them. The congressional testimony particularly irks them.

Steve Weinberg, owner of Weinberg Dodge, a rejected dealership in Grandview, Mo., says his dealership bought cars whenever Press asked.

"It's unbelievable," Weinberg says. "We gave them our help, and look what they did to us."

To Wallace, the contrast between Press' congressional testimony and his earlier pleas to dealers to save the company was jarring: "He was saying, 'We need you. We've got to have you. You're our only salvation.'

"Three months later in front of Congress, he's saying the dealers are a liability. He was the voice of a desperate company."

Today Press is no longer the voice of Chrysler. He works in a small office at Chrysler headquarters with no direct reports and no company responsibilities, trying to repair his personal finances and find a job.

Chrysler's one-time savior is out of action.