Toyota And Honda To Focus On Styling And Performance To Become Competitive Again

Toyota and Honda are striving to get people excited about their product lineups, with more adventurous styling and new performance models, while also playing a bit of catch-up.

The demands of the unintended-acceleration crisis put Toyota's engineers behind in some key technical areas. Meanwhile, Honda is eager to reassert its standing as a powerhouse of powertrains. Honda is launching its Earth Dreams engine family, and Toyota is focusing on direct injection, turbocharging and advanced transmissions.

In the luxury sphere, Lexus aims to improve its sedan offerings to match up better with Mercedes-Benz and BMW, while Acura targets premium rivals Audi, Buick, Infiniti and Volvo with a new compact sedan and a series of key redesigns.

DuDE - 7/30/2012 12:38:12 PM

+2 Boost

They better!

vonbeeler - 7/30/2012 1:35:28 PM

-2 Boost

Great. Translation:
Toyota and Honda to refocus on copying the successful styling of others.
The Toyota GT86 pictured is a blatant copy of the Maserati Granturismo

thetruth01 - 7/30/2012 7:57:18 PM

+2 Boost

Toyota, the largest auto company in the world, is not competitive?

MorePower - 7/30/2012 11:52:01 PM

+1 Boost

You are taking the quote out of context. GM was the largest automotive company in the world while producing a model line-up, both domestic and international, that was wildly uncompetitive in many aspects: styling, performance, reliability, eco-friendliness, etc.