Another Toyota executive leaves for Detroit: Lexus’ Farley goes to Ford

what in the world is going on at toyota?

press, meyer and farley were three of the most respected people at the company.

It seems ToyLex is falling apart :(

^EL, the smell of burning plastic is coming from your imploding real estate career.

Some of the answers can be derived from the comments of "indifferent" and "no1listensanyway" below. Obviously Ford had to make an offer no competent and self-confident executive could rationally refuse but I'm sure that differences in corporate culture had a lot to do with it also.

It will be very interesting to see what new marketing strategies will now be employed to overcome years of neglect of products like Mercury and Lincoln, not to mention the lingering negative effects on Ford's reputation from the rusty Fords decades ago and implied warranty issues that were never properly addressed to the satisfaction of customers.

Detroit continues to believe that everything can be fixed with the right marketing approach. I believe that the only companies that will survive as car manufacturers are those that produce good user-friendly products with the best materials, fasteners, and workmanship and back up the product without weasel-wording warrantiy provisions and by actually honoring warranties including implied warranties.

does anyone know what these American companies are paying them? is detroit just buying Toyota executives or is there something wrong at Toyota?

Or could it be that Toyota plans to acquire Ford and this executive move fits into the plan?

im sure they are paying them a lot more than toyota... or the very least giving them better packages... Chrysler obviously has the funding from Cereburs to 'buy' these executives and Ford... well I have no idea what ford offered this gu

Or giving us warmed-over ten-year-old Ford Focuses...

Ford really needs to get its act together. GM is producing fabulous new models- CTS isn't even the tip of the iceberg. There's their bread-and-butter, the very well-executed new crossovers. And the new Saturns, the G8, the new Malibu--heck, I've even found myself smitten with their new trucks.

Chrysler's success is positively guaranteed with Cerberus behind them. Their cars are crap right now- but they won't be for long.

Ford is sad. They're still losing money, even when they sell of all of their brands. They have no real "plan," but they're just floundering. The thing is, you can't just try to make money by selling things. You need to work--and spend money--to make money. If they lost profits by bringing the Euro Focus and Mondeo here, because they would need to lower the prices, then so be it! They would lose money for a little while! But then people would realize how great the cars are and they'd sell like crazy! Their investment would come back, ten-fold!

I don't know why the old Taurus was such a hit. Owners tell me it was a piece of crap and that is why I am so upset that the newer Ford 500 was renamed Taurus just because Ford had trouble overcoming the stupidity of launching the Ford 500 with an underpowered engine and the dreaded CVT.

I think these guys are jumping ship for one reason - Posistion. Lets not forget, Toyota is a Japanese company, therefore the chances of an American becoming a CEO are very slim. These guys probably will see more oppurtunities in Detroit to become the top dogs.

there's some truth to this. press was the only white person to break into the top 50 managers in the company...and he was there for decades and was ran toyota's largest market: the US. talk about ethnocentric.

I think these guys are jumping ship for one reason - Posistion. Lets not forget, Toyota is a Japanese company, therefore the chances of an American becoming a CEO are very slim. These guys probably will see more oppurtunities in Detroit to become the top dogs.

I think these guys are jumping ship for one reason - Posistion. Lets not forget, Toyota is a Japanese company, therefore the chances of an American becoming a CEO are very slim. These guys probably will see more oppurtunities in Detroit to become the top dogs.

Nothing really surprising here. When a company is successful, their people get poached. I see it a lot of it in sports where assistant coaches move to opposing teams.

Like SC's Trojans - the asst coaches are all over the place now (Norm Chow, Lane Kiffen, etc.)

...still, Toyota starts missing sales goals, struggles with recalls, builds an overpriced and underutilized factory in the middle of nowhere, subsidizes truck sales as never before...

There has to be something in the background other than money or career goals. Remember, these guys are 20 yr old veterans of Toyota. They could have jumped ship long time before these issues surfaced. Also, Toyo doesn't seem to mind.