Like a Hollywood starlet caught drunk behind the wheel, Toyota's first operating loss looks somehow worse than if it came from a regular car-maker.
Shortly after World War II, executives at Japan's Toyota Motor Company made a decision from which, I believe, we all can benefit. They decided to make cars the way they'd make, say, sushi.
A strange and impressive sight currently greets drivers zooming over the Vincent Thomas span bridge across the sprawling California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Toyota Motor Corp. is taking additional steps to scale back production at its North American plants, the automaker said Thursday, in anticipation of worsening auto sales.
On what was to be a historic day halting all of Toyota's Japanese assembly lines, the automaker announced late Thursday that it kept one line running.
Toyota's third-generation Prius, due at dealerships this spring, will have an optional solar panel on its roof. The panel will power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine, Toyota says.
General Motors lost the title of world's largest automaker to rival Toyota Motor in 2008, according to sales figures released Wednesday by the troubled U.S. automaker. It was the first time in nearly 80 years that GM did not sell the most cars in the world.
Japan's top automaker Toyota reshuffled its leadership Tuesday after posting a 4% decline in sales for 2008, with the grandson of the company's founder becoming president.
Toyota announced Tuesday it will idle all 12 of its wholly owned factories in Japan for an extra 11 days in response to the slumping auto market.
A fair amount of crocodile tears are being shed on this side of the Pacific over the travails of Japanese automakers.
Like a Hollywood starlet caught drunk behind the wheel, Toyota's first operating loss looks somehow worse than if it came from a regular car-maker.
Shortly after World War II, executives at Japan's Toyota Motor Company made a decision from which, I believe, we all can benefit. They decided to make cars the way they'd make, say, sushi.
A strange and impressive sight currently greets drivers zooming over the Vincent Thomas span bridge across the sprawling California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Toyota Motor Corp. is taking additional steps to scale back production at its North American plants, the automaker said Thursday, in anticipation of worsening auto sales.
On what was to be a historic day halting all of Toyota's Japanese assembly lines, the automaker announced late Thursday that it kept one line running.
Toyota's third-generation Prius, due at dealerships this spring, will have an optional solar panel on its roof. The panel will power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine, Toyota says.
General Motors lost the title of world's largest automaker to rival Toyota Motor in 2008, according to sales figures released Wednesday by the troubled U.S. automaker. It was the first time in nearly 80 years that GM did not sell the most cars in the world.
Japan's top automaker Toyota reshuffled its leadership Tuesday after posting a 4% decline in sales for 2008, with the grandson of the company's founder becoming president.
Toyota announced Tuesday it will idle all 12 of its wholly owned factories in Japan for an extra 11 days in response to the slumping auto market.
A fair amount of crocodile tears are being shed on this side of the Pacific over the travails of Japanese automakers.
Japanese auto giant Toyota said Monday that it would suffer an operating loss due to plummeting auto sales and a strong local currency.
Detroit's Big Three aren't the only automotive companies that want to see the government step in with some much-needed financial help.
Sales of new cars and trucks plummeted 32%, reaching levels not seen since 1975
After posting its worst sales decline in 20 years, Toyota Motor Co. is offering an uncharacteristically splashy incentive offer. The automaker is offering 0% financing on eleven models nationwide.
Slowing sales of Scion's eye-catching vehicles indicate they may be losing some cachet
Toyota lowered its global sales target for 2009 to 9.7 million vehicles on Thursday, down from an earlier 10.4 million vehicles, blaming "tough times," caused by rising material costs, a slowing U.S. market and soaring gas prices
Japanese automaker Toyota has laid off 800 people at a plant in southwestern Japan, or about 10 percent of the plant's work force, in response to declining sales in North America
Toyota lowered its global vehicle sales plan for this year to 9.5 million vehicles -- down from 9.85 million
SI.com's Mark Beech offers the most intriguing news, notes and analysis fans need to know heading into each week's race.
The No. 2 automaker joins its US counterparts in trying to adjust to soaring gas prices
WATKINS GLEN, New York -- Now that Mark Martin is back in a full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup ride for 2009 and Kyle Busch is back in Victory Lane after his thrilling win at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night, it draws a stark contrast to the different directions Chevrolet and Toyota are heading.
A last-minute no-interest financing offer and strong sales of some cars helped General Motors Corp. keep its U.S. sales over Toyota Motor Corp. last month, but it was still the worst June for the industry in 17 years and a harbinger of more misery ahead
High gasoline prices and a weak economy took a toll on U.S. sales of Toyota Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co. vehicles in June, with Toyota reporting a 21.4 percent decline and Ford dropping 27.9 percent
Toyota is introducing a plug-in hybrid with next-generation lithium-ion batteries in Japan, the U.S. and Europe by 2010, under a widespread strategy to be green
The hybrid market is booming, but manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand -- and the need for the special electric batteries
Toyota said Friday that nothing had been decided yet on using its California joint venture plant with General Motors to produce its Prius hybrid
Flag-waving American loyalists were heartened to see the announcement that Toyota's January-to-March profit sank 28%. It provided evidence that even mighty Toyota can't escape the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - the deadly combination of high fuel prices, surging raw material costs, the global credit crunch and a strong yen.
My recent column about the independent distributors who resell cars from Toyota to Toyota dealers brought a predictable official response: Despite the distributor profit, customers don't pay higher prices, so what's the worry? No harm, no foul.
It's an impressive hat trick: Apple not only takes the No. 1 slot on this year's list of America's Most Admired Companies but also tops the global survey - and wins the highest marks for innovation too. That's probably no coincidence. In an industry that changes every nanosecond, the 32-year-old company has time and again innovated its way out of the doldrums. Rivals always seem to be playing catch-up.
A lawsuit among Toyota dealers has shed new light on one of the Japanese automaker's less well-known business practices: its use of independent distributors to sell cars in the United States.
For the first time on the Cup circuit this century, it's going to happen Sunday in Fontana, Calif.: A foreign manufacturer will celebrate in Victory Lane.
The Sprint Cup season is upon us, officially getting underway Saturday with the Budweiser Shootout, followed by Daytona 500 qualifying Sunday and NASCAR's biggest race a week later. Then it's 35 more events until the championship. Indeed, this promises to be one of the most interesting of the circuit's 60 seasons.
For Michael Waltrip, the upcoming Sprint Cup campaign should turn out better than the 2007 season, when the driver debuted his own three-car team. Here's eight reasons why '08 should be great for the two-time Daytona 500 champ:
With auto sales headed for their lowest level in a decade this year, automakers are relying on a comfortable old friend to lift them out of the doldrums: the demographic cycle.
You can put a negative spin on this if you like: General Motors, once the undisputed global leader in automobile sales, lost half its crown in 2007 when it was tied by Toyota.
The race to see who was the largest auto company in the world in 2007 remains undecided, but that hasn't stopped Toyota from flexing its muscles at the Detroit auto show.
Automakers posted lower sales in December, closing out a difficult year that likely brought the worst performances of the decade in the face of higher gasoline prices and declining home values.
U.S. stocks slipped at the start of trading Wednesday as investors considered a record drop in monthly housing prices and indications of weak holiday retail sales.
Toyota Motor Company does a better job than any car company in America of keeping its customers coming back, according to data from J.D. Power and Assoc. General Motors ranks second in customer retention.
NASCAR's major stories for 2007 are behind us. We know Dale Earnhardt Jr. is headed for Hendrick Motorsports and Kyle Busch for Joe Gibbs Racing, Gibbs for Toyota and Jimmie Johnson and Hendrick have completed a dominant championship run and will collect a enormous check at the Nextel Cup awards ceremony in New York on Nov. 30.
In a weak month for auto sales, Americans turned back to light truck models in October rather than the car models that had been gaining ground - a shift that helped to lift the sales of General Motors ahead of its leading Japanese rival Toyota.
The Toyota brand has lost its top position for iron-clad reliability, according to an influential Consumer Reports survey released Tuesday.
Introduction of the next version of Toyota's hit Prius gas-electric hybrid won't hinge on improvements in a more efficient type of battery called lithium-ion, a senior Toyota executive said Friday.
Honda and Toyota offered U.S. consumers the highest average fuel efficiency of 2007 model year vehicles, the government reported Wednesday.
Toyota Motor Corp. says it will recall floor mats in 55,000 of its 2007 Lexus ES 350 and 2007 Camry models that, if not secured in place, could slip and get trapped under or over the accelerator. This could cause a car to accelerate even after the driver lifted his or her foot off the gas pedal.
Toyota Motor Corp. says it will recall floor mats in its 2007 Lexus ES 350 and the 2007 Camry models that, if not secured in place, could slip and get trapped under or over the accelerator. This could cause a car to accelerate even after the driver lifted his or her foot off the gas pedal.
Chrysler pulled off a major coup Thursday, hiring away the highly-regarded Jim Press, Toyota's top North American executive, to run its sales and marketing operations
No, that noise you just heard wasn't another Toyota engine blowing up. Nor was it Michael Waltrip kicking the bumper of his No. 55 Camry in frustration, failing to qualify for yet another Nextel Cup race because of a weak Toyota engine.
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- Joe Gibbs Racing will switch to Toyotas in 2008, ending a 16-year relationship with General Motors that produced three NASCAR championships.
FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- While Joe Gibbs Racing officials remained mum Friday on the anticipated switch from Chevrolet to Toyota, Kyle Busch was more than happy to talk about it.
Toyota plans to sell 10.4 million vehicles globally in 2009, it said Friday, a sales target that would put the Japanese automaker ahead of a record hit by world leader General Motors 30 years ago.
Joe Gibbs Racing has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday and several published reports, following up on a June 2007 posting by SI.com's Tim Tuttle, say the team will announce it has signed a deal to field Toyotas in the Nextel Cup series.
Toyota Motor Corp. and Isuzu Motors Ltd. said they would jointly develop and produce small diesel engines for use in Toyota cars for the European market, further strengthening the world's biggest automaker's product lineup.
Toyota Motor Corp. expects industrywide U.S. auto sales to slow for the second straight year in 2007, with a rebound beginning in 2008, the company's U.S. sales chief said Wednesday.
Toyota Motor Corp.'s quarterly operating profit rose by a better-than-expected 32 percent as brisk overseas sales combined with a softer yen to make up for chronic weakness in domestic demand.
Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled a "plug-in" hybrid car based on its popular Prius model Wednesday, saying it would test the fuel-saving vehicle on public roads - a first for the industry.
Toyota Motor Corp. said it would resume work at two-thirds of its car assembly lines in Japan on Tuesday after an earthquake cut off supplies of key components to its factories, and it kept its global sales targets unchanged for 2007.
The other shoe fell quickly at Ginn Racing. Veteran drivers Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemechek both lost their rides this week as the team restructured, perhaps so that it could merge with Dale Earnhardt Inc. and remain under NASCAR's four-car limit for each team.
With the fireworks of Daytona in the rear-view mirror, NASCAR heads into the second half of the season. The plots thicken as 2007 has proved to be ever bit as intriguing as February promised. Here are 10 storylines to watch as the season heads into the stretch run.
Toyota Motor elected its first American director at its shareholders meeting Friday, naming its North American chief Jim Press to its 30-member board, a sign of the growing importance of that market to the company's success.
Top executives at Toyota Motor Co. are concerned the automaker has built too many factories in the United States and are urging a new strategy of greater reliance on exports from Japan, The Wall Street Journal Online reported Wednesday.
Late in 1999, rumors circulated in CART's Champ Car Series that Chip Ganassi Racing was going to switch from using Honda engines to using Toyota. At the time, the reports seemed pure fantasy. Ganassi was on the way to winning his fourth straight championship; Toyota was winless in the same four years.
There's a reason you may be considering buying a gas-electric hybrid vehicle - besides wanting to help the environment or visit the gas station less frequently. Your hybrid awareness is a direct re...
After years of hype, the Car of Tomorrow is now officially the Car That's Three Races Old. With more than 750 miles under its belt, it's quickly losing its new car status, but not its intrigue as fans, drivers and teams alike attempt to figure out what to make of the new design.
George Lucas is sitting in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, wearing a red and white race suit as he makes his way to the starting line of the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. His strategy as he steps off the truck and into his race car is really quite simple. "I'm just going to watch everyone in front of me crash," he says.
For decades, when the NASCAR community talked about silly season, the discussion revolved around what drivers were switching rides. But for the last several years, the talk has grown to include crew chiefs, who have been moving almost as often as the drivers.
Setting expectations can be a fragile thing. Left unfulfilled, the sheer weight of their failure can lead to a pack of monkeys landing on the backs of everyone involved.
The third race of the 2007 NASCAR season on Sunday sure looked a lot like the third race of the '05 and '06 seasons, as Jimmie Johnson took his third-straight checkered flag at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Here are five things we learned in Sin City.
Two Tinny sedans left the port of Yokohama in August 1957, bound for California - the first exports from Toyota. The four-door clunkers flopped. The car, which looked like a brick with a roof on to...
This week marks the opening of the spring selling season for automakers and dealers. Get ready for some especially intense activity.
From Elvis to Beyonc�: How Toyota, no. 3 on Fortune's list of America's Most Admired Companies, keeps rolling.
Toyota luxury brand, Lexus, saw it's rank in Consumer Reports' annual "predicted reliability" survey from first to fifth. Replacing Lexus in the top spot was Toyota's own Toyota brand.
The first two races of the 2007 NASCAR season are in the books and now the Cup boys will take a week off before the racing goes green again at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 11. Herewith, five absurdly early predictions for the rest of the season:
Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it will spend $1.3 billion to build a new sport/ utility vehicle plant in Mississippi, creating roughly 2,000 jobs and making it its fifth assembly plant in the U.S.
Whenever you're the new kid in town, the last thing you want to do is ruffle any feathers your first day of school. At least, that's how I always approached it; you learn the ropes, you try and slither through unscathed and adjust in a brave new world in which you're trying to find your place.
On Sunday, Japanese automaker Toyota will become the first foreign manufacturer to back a team on NASCAR's premier circuit. So how is the world's most successful automaker being greeted? "We're going to go to war with them," says Roush Racing owner Jack Roush, whose Ford-backed team is the largest in NASCAR. "They should give us their best shot, because we'll be giving as good as we take."
A couple of big automakers are due to report fourth-quarter and year-end results this week and the numbers won't be pretty. Chrysler is expected to announce a billion dollar loss for 2006 as it presents another restructuring plan that could bring the elimination of thousands of jobs. At General Motors, meanwhile, analysts are looking for a multi-billion dollar loss - better than 2005's horrific results but plenty of red ink none the same.
At the beginning of each season, hope springs eternal. This is the year that your favorite driver will win the championship, the season that your favorite make of car will turn the tide. But behind every silver lining, there's a dark cloud.
Through four days of new conferences official and in darkened corners during the Lowe's Speedway media tour, the one theme that clearly emerged is the fact that NASCAR has gone global without leaving its own backyard.
In its 99-year history, no year at General Motors was worse than 2006. It started off with talk of bankruptcy following a $10.6 billion loss for 2005, got worse as GM was forced by shareholder Kirk Kerkorian into alliance negotiations with Renault-Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, and ended with renewed talk that GM soon must relinquish its position as the world's Number One automaker to Toyota.
The stock rally that has lifted indexes to near record or multi-year highs looks poised to get back on track Friday ahead after a key reading on inflation showed zero increase and a measure of business spending rose more than expected.
The Toyota executive who oversaw the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid car program died in a plane crash Saturday off the coast of California.
Who can remember all the way back to last summer, when we had daylight-saving-time, baseball and $3 a gallon gasoline prices?
Growth in manufacturing slowed more than expected in September, according to a closely watched survey of executives in the sector.
While its competitors stumble and struggle to cut costs and capacity, Toyota Motor Corp. has seemingly had the smoothest ride possible to the top of the industry.
Toyota Motor Corporation ranks no. 8 on FORTUNE's Global 500 this year, with $185.8 billion in revenues, up 7.6% from the previous year. The Toyota, Japan-based company was ranked no. 7 on the 2005 list. Its 2005 profits were $12.1 billion, up 11.2% from a year earlier. 2005 was a banner year for most Global 500 companies.
Toyota Motor Corp., Japan' s leading automaker, is set to lower its U.S. production target for some vehicle models because of higher fuel prices and concerns the economy could slow, according to a media report Wednesday.
TIP 1 Pssst...bridge for sale
As car buyers search for more fuel-efficient alternatives, interest in plug-in hybrids is increasing.
Toyota is not interested in exploring its own alliance with General Motors as a way to try block a potential GM-Nissan-Renault tie-up, according to a published report.
Toyota's top execs are discussing putting out feelers to GM in a bid to form an alliance and head off rivals Nissan and Renault, a news report said Sunday.
Toyota is recalling 368,000 SUVs and Nissan is recalling 201,000 of its cars.
This fall, Toyota will voluntarily recall nearly 160,000 Toyota Tundra pickups so that they can be made less safe for children riding in the front seat.
In order to comply with federal safety regulations, Toyota will recall its Tundra pickup truck to disable an airbag cut-off switch designed to protect children riding in its front passenger seat.
A group of retirees from the three major U.S. automakers is rolling out a new fleet of advertisements promoting patriotic purchasing, echoing the "Buy American," sentiment that grew during the 1980s amid fears of a Japanese takeover.
The latest auto sales numbers raise the question whether the Big Three should now include Toyota Motor rather than Chrysler Group parent DaimlerChrysler.
Always the subject of backbiting and criticism from its rivals, Toyota could be excused these days for feeling as if it has a larger target than usual painted on its back. The more successful it becomes, the more flack it gets.
Flip on Univision or Telemundo on any given night, and in between the melodramatic telenovelas and campy talk shows, you'll see the biggest consumer brands in the world pitching their products in Spanish. It would seem every major company, from car makers to fast food franchises, is trying to reach the nation's fast-growing Hispanic population, now more than 40 million strong.
You find plenty of lists out there of cars that get the best fuel economy. Those lists are easy to produce, but they aren't really of much use.
This could be the year that Japanese automakers rediscover their roots in the U.S. market.
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