Innovators: Could Akio Toyoda Become The Steve Jobs Of The Automotive World?

When the final tally was made for 2011, Toyota Motor, formerly the world's largest automaker, slipped to third place in production behind General Motors  and Volkswagen. It's not surprising: Toyota has endured a string of calamities over the past three years -- natural and man-made -- that would make even the company's famous paranoia seem like sunny optimism. The latest is endaka, the strong yen that causes everything that Toyota manufactures in Japan to be more expensive and undermines its profitability. A November issue of Automotive News predicted "more misery" for Toyota as "sales slip, floods delay, shoppers stray."
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carguy68 - 2/9/2012 1:11:29 PM

+1 Boost

Ahahaha!!!!! NO!!!

Joe_Limon - 2/9/2012 1:18:40 PM

-1 Boost

lol, would that make Toyota the apple of the automotive world? If so, count me out of the soon to be overpriced bland mobiles only offered in white, then black during a midcycle refresh, and finally multiple colours at the end of the cycle.

thetruth01 - 2/9/2012 1:42:31 PM

+4 Boost

One line about Steve Jobs in a very long article becomes the Autospies headline. Good lords.

Fijian - 2/9/2012 4:46:52 PM

+1 Boost

Wow now you are really pushing it.

Fijian - 2/9/2012 4:47:33 PM

+1 Boost

I must agree however, his company did have the most recalls.

Willis - 2/10/2012 7:11:15 AM

-2 Boost

"Now Toyota is bent on building cars BMW can only dream of..."


I stopped reading there.

Fijian - 2/9/2012 6:30:58 PM

-1 Boost

There is no way a car can be in the rental service for a long time and then later they find there are no pads.Its a total setup like the Volt fire.Leave the battery in after a big crash and the fire breaks after 2 weeks.Total setup.They cannot even duplicate it.How many car fires happen in an accident? If we follow the NTHSB we will still be riding horses.

truckman - 2/10/2012 2:25:04 AM

+2 Boost

I like Akio, but another Steve Jobs, that is soon to be determined, I think first he must up Toyota's quality, we need to be assured of the metal blend in the trucks is better quality that is resistant to rust, lets not kid ourselves, all the companies could use a few cost saving corners to cut, Toyota cut quality with the metal blend, and how do we know that they fixed it?

kpaxx - 2/10/2012 2:05:50 PM

-1 Boost

Toyota would need to learn how to innovate first. Their company culture and attitude is counter productive to this. What innovations has toyota brought to the table other than the in glove compartment CD player?

knowitall1985 - 2/11/2012 4:52:19 PM

+1 Boost

Yea like the hybrid they copied.....NOT!!!!!