Toyota Motor Corp. president and CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, announced plans to re-enter the sports-car market at an auto industry conference in early August, saying that Toyota aspired “to a higher cause than just building cars and making money,”
the
Financial Times
reported.
A
New York Times
report noted
that Toyoda has engineered a management shake-up at the company: “Four of Toyota’s five executive vice presidents, the group that now leads the company under Mr. Toyoda, are new to their jobs…. Further, the four newcomers are each in charge of a global region on top of duties within the company.”
The
New York Times
article said that while Toyota dealers and employees praise the energy Toyoda has brought to the company, Toyota faces risks: “Mr. Toyoda’s biggest problem, executives and analysts say, is transforming a lineup dotted with mundane-looking vehicles that buyers bought because of their reliability, not because of their style appeal.
“It is a problem shared with Detroit…. Unlike G.M., Ford and Chrysler, however, Toyota cannot reach back to its roots and tap into a DBA of sexy sheet metal.
“And it faces a difficult balancing act: become too aggressive, and Toyota risks chasing off the practical-minded consumers who have been its base for a half-century.”
Toyota reportedly plans to shut down production at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. in Fremont, Calif., formerly a joint venture with General Motors. The venture “was the brainchild of Mr. Toyoda’s father, Shoichiro Toyoda, and paved the company’s way into the American car market in 1984,” the
New York Times
reported. (Sources:
Financial Times,
Aug. 6, 2009;
New York Times,
Aug. 5, 2009.)
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