If one boils all of automotive history down to its most pivotal and revolutionary chapters, there are four of them, so far. And this image represents a key moment of the last one of them: Toyota, circa 1968. With this lineup of cars Toyota vaulted into prominence in the US, the world’s biggest and richest market. By 1975, it was the largest import brand. In 2015, Toyota sold 2.5 million cars in the US, which put it a mere 4% behind Ford, and well ahead of FCA to be America’s #3 in overall sales, only 19% behind GM.
Globally, Toyota’s is the largest and by far most profitable automaker; its profits are greater than GM, Ford and FCA put together. But Toyota’s greatest achievement and lasting influence is how it has revolutionized the whole industry. One doesn’t even need to drive a Toyota to have benefited from their obsession on quality, reliability and durability; there’s more than a bit of The Toyota Way in every car now.
Chapter 1: the 1901 Mercedes 35 hp, by Daimler. Yes, there were many other automobiles before it, but they were all part of that early experimental period which was really all about making a buggy…horsless. Meaning, they were literally buggies: short and tall, with their engines under the seats or elsewhere, had one or two cylinders, which drove the wheels with various Rube Golberg-worthy solutions. Everyone was experiment, hoping to find the right and lasting solution.
The 1901 Mercedes, as designed by the brilliant Wilhelm Maybach, was utterly revolutionary. It sat low, with a long wheelbase and wide track. It had four cylinders, under a hood in front, with a transmission directly behind it. Its prodigious power, speed, and handling vaulted it well ahead of anything else, and made it a highly successful racing car as well as a touring car. Out of nowhere, the configuration of the modern car, still largely relevant today, was conceived and built. And everyone rushed to imitate it.
Chapter 2: Henry Ford. His Model T reflected the basic configuration of the 1901 Mercedes, with his own adaptations. But Ford’s breakthrough was of course in mass producing the Model T, thus bringing its cost ever lower. But he refused to compromise on quality, and the result was overwhelming. No one could compete with the Ford’s combination of quality, performance and price, for a while. But Ford’s downfall was that he was stuck; he thought he could build the T forever. What was lacking was a vision for continual improvement; not only in quality, but in the design and features of his car.
Chapter 3: General Motors. GM took advantage of Ford’s blind spot, and offered a wide range of cars that were designed primarily as modern consumer goods and status symbols, not just utilitarian vehicles. Although GM adopted Ford’s assembly line techniques, it never adopted his obsession with quality. “Just good enough” was the watchword in terms of quality, and although that was generally good enough during GM golden early years (roughly 1925 – 1955), that increasingly fell by the wayside as size, styling, power and features became increasingly predominant. This lack of commitment to quality would prove to be the fatal flaw of GM, the rest of the domestics, as well as the Europeans.
GM’s model worked well enough as long as the American economy was growing very strongly. Perpetually optimistic buyers were willing to overlook the increasingly iffy quality as long as they felt they could afford to trade in every three years on an even bigger, flashier and more powerful car. But that business model made it vulnerable: as the Big Three cars got ever bigger and flashier, and the economy finally hit the doldrums in the late 50s, a growing number of Americans looked elsewhere. GM-addiction was an expensive habit, and by the mid 50s, a profound change was under way. Import sales soared, as typified by the cheap but rugged VW Beetle. In 1959, imports accounted for over 10% of the market. And Rambler benefited too, for those wanting a somewhat smaller domestic.
But with the exception of the VW, most of the European imports were not capable of surviving American style use and abuse. The combination of the domestic compacts that arrived in the 1959 – 1961 period and the fatality rate of the imports caused a severe retraction of the import’s share by 1961; back to some 4%. But that did not mean that all was well again; hardly.
American compacts continued to grow during the 60s, reflecting the unsustainable automotive inflation and increasingly uneven quality that was coming from Detroit in that era. Meanwhile, the VW continued to sell well, but the same forces that drove the 1950s import boom were still very much alive and growing. Toyota and the other Japanese arrived just at the right time to capitalize on it.
Chapter 4: Toyota. In an effort to help Japan rebuild its industry after the war, American occupation forces brought in American experts in various fields. The most important one would be an invitation to W. Edwards Deming (right), a statistician, engineer, professor, lecturer and management consultant. Deming and a group of other advisers instigated what became the Kaizen (Continuous Improvement”) methods that became a key element in Japan’s meteoric rise in building quality optics, electronics, consumer goods and of course automobiles during the 1950s that elevated Japan to the world’s second largest economy.
While Deming’s principles were being adopted and developed further in Japan, becoming a national obsession, in his home country he and his principles were ignored by the automakers. Only after its near-death experience in 1980, Ford hired Deming to specifically improve the quality of its vehicles. Ford’s execs were surprised to learn that the key to improving quality was not something that just happened on the assembly line; Deming pointed the finger directly at them, telling them that management actions were responsible for 85% of all the problems in building better quality cars. Quality has to start at the very top; it has to be fully ingratiated in every aspect of corporate life; quality can’t be added like a Band Aid.
No company in Japan embraced this method more thoroughly than Toyota. It developed its own method: Toyota Kaizan or “The Toyota Way”, a system of continuous improvement that became a corporate obsession to find ever greater efficiencies along with improvements in quality. And that method not only vaulted Toyota to the top, but has utterly revolutionized the global industry. Toyota arrived in the US right at a time when the quality of domestic cars was hitting a low point. After decades of denial, the domestics eventually were forced to try to learn The Toyota Way, although it was too late in some cases and respects, or not really embraced fully and deeply. And the Toyota Way never ends; Toyota is still constantly improving production efficiency with its latest plants, and preening its quality rankings.
The Europeans were profoundly scared of what they saw happening in the US, and were able to make enough improvements to their quality and durability to hold off a dreaded “Japanese Invasion”. But the threat of it is precisely why European cars became drastically more reliable during the 80s and 90s, even if not at the level of Toyota.
This week, we will look at how all of this manifested itself in some of the key Toyota vehicles from its early days in the US, with CCs as well as a number of vintage reviews, comparisons, and some articles on Toyota from this key time. As well, there will be a random smattering of Toyota posts from Contributors. It’s impossible to do a comprehensive history of Toyota in one week, but we hope to give you a taste of Kaizan, which came in many flavors.
Unusually for a large car maker Toyota took criticism seriously their product were not very good in this country anyway their cars rusted out much too quickly and handled appallingly, they set about fixing it and this became their pet market small it may be but Toyota went out of its way to spec cars differently for kiwi conditions, consequently Toyotas hold their value untill they really arent worth owning, My friend who recently bought a well used Caldina to replace her V70 Volvo which turned out to be an unmitigated POS loves the Japanese wagon and plans to trade the remains of the Volvo on another Toyota for her son
I don’t remember seeing any Toyotas in the UK til the early 70s. I really liked the big 6 cylinder cars, especially the coupes & wagons. Was there a Toyota woody or is my memory playing trick? The mechanic at our local garage said Toyotas were the only Japanese cars worth bothering with until the mid 80s and they were a step up from other Japanese cars
Mid 70s Crown wagons had a woody tail and I vaguely remember seeing a full woody example in Adelaide. A quick search shows a Corona MkII in woodness but I don’t know if that was factory/dealer.
Crown
Corona MkII
Thanks Don, I knew I’d seen one!
There’s this Cressida woody wagon, which lives in my neighborhood:
Thanks Paul, have we had a woody week?
That wood be fun!
Woody wagons in Crown turned up here in about 68, the metal under the vinyl wood disolved quite rapidly rendering most of them unroadworthy by the early 70s.
It took us a while, but we fell for Toyota bigtime in oz. Looking forward to this week’s readings.
Yeah – in the sixties and early seventies Datsun was bigger. Then things went pear-shaped for them with the 200B, and I don’t think they ever recovered. Toyota kind of took over, especially when Ford’s Laser went to full-import in the nineties.
Now Nissan seems to be an SUV company that sells a few cars on the side, and Toyota’s kinda the default car you buy when you don’t want/care to know anything about cars.
Yes, last year Toyota was the highest-selling brand in Australia, almost double second place (1.8x Mazda sales), had the highest-selling car (Corolla) and highest-selling pickup (Hilux).
A far cry from the late-50s Toyopet!
The Toyota Way really shouldn’t have been a mystery. When your competitors have switched from making good cars to making good union contracts, you can conquer the market by making a good car.
Yes, and it was a shared responsibility, made up of multiple factors and over the course of many years. It’s really not fair to sum it up in a two-sentence comment.
When Demmings finally started working with Ford in 1980, both sides (labor and management) had become addicted to a game of blaming the other side for problems, rather than solving them.
But as Paul pointed out in the article, GM (which, for about three-quarters of its existence, called the shots on US products and labor practices) seemed content to build products that “just good enough,” and counted on obelecence to drive future demand, through replacement. In the eyes of management, all that was needed were mindless bodies to slap the crap together. Since the Clayton Act gave trade unions a monopoly on the source of labor, and since GM was making money hand over fist, its 1970 labor contract with the labor union seemed like the only way to avoid a protracted strike. Since the US was in a slight recession, GM banked on its business model working forever and made many concessions to the UAW – thus earning the nickname, “Generous Motors.” So all of the US automakers had to pay more, and decided to cut costs on materials. So when things broke, and Japanese cars seemed not to, an easy excuse was, “Well, they don’t have the labor grief we’ve got to put up with.”
But as Demmings preached, labor and other factors only account for 15% of quality problems in building cars. You see this when you dig into Toyotas and US cars from prior to about 1990. It goes beyond the fit and finish; the components in the Toyotas are more likely to have been designed to go in (and come out) more easily, and they’ll usually only go in one way – the correct way. And when it came to things the customer saw – front and rear fascias, instrument panels – there seemed to be fewer individual pieces to fall out of alignment, rub against each other and speak, or fall off completely. It’s as though the US designers weren’t allowed, or given enough time, to consider how the vehicles were actually built.
Long post, but even at that it only scratches the surface of what led up to the storm.
“When your competitors have switched from making good cars to making good union contracts”
Detroit didn’t “switch” anything. Its cars were never particularly reliable, but there had been no basis for comparison.
Ford’s mass production, which was copied by everyone else in Detroit and somewhat copied by the Europeans, involved minimal quality control. Ford’s innovation was the use of interchangeable parts, which made cars more reliable than they had been when they were hand-built but not as good as they could have been.
Toyota pioneered the concept of lean production, which included QC throughout the build process and parts made in small batches so that they could be improved regularly. Its cars were made by union workers. The failure to implement lean systems effectively is a management problem, not a labor problem.
Some unions are more equal than others.
Now this is a week I can get behind! Who could ask for anything more?
Toy-ota!!!
Is it just me or did Toyota purposely blur the image of the Crown near the back of the picture of Toyota’s 68 USA line. If so, it may have been a smart move. Looking at the Crown might have made the big three see that Toyota was going to come at them with ever bigger cars. A few calls to bought and paid for congressman could have still sent them packing. The rampant intellectual property theft evidenced by the Corona’s engine and transmission were valid moral reasons to do so.
Intellectual property theft? Dude put the bong away, Toyota and Chevrolet had joint ventures going back in the late 30s Chevrolet learned nothing from the exercise Toyota learned lots.
John, have you ever heard of “depth of field”? If you focus a camera on something in the front, the objects in the distance invariably are out of focus.
Are you big on conspiracy theories?
The Japanese were also accused of copying US aircraft designs prior to Pearl Harbor, no doubt because Americans believed they (like other Asians) were too stupid to think originally.
But the only convincing case I know of was the Nakajima G5N bomber, developed from the Douglas DC-4E which they purchased after American airlines lost interest. And it was a failure.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but the fact that the Americans during the four year Pacific war started with the older Buffalo fighter and went through the Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, with the Bearcat coming and jets in the wings and the Japanese stuck with the Zero from beginning to end might indicate, not that the Japanese were stupid, but were reliant on outside help that dried up during the war.
Japan had several late-war fighters which were highly competitive with Allied contemporaries:
Japanese Army: Nakajima Ki-84, Ki-100
Navy: Kawanishi N1K Shiden or “George”, Mitsubishi A2M “Jack” (an interceptor designed by the Zero guy Horikoshi)
Japan, like Germany, had logistical problems which undermined late-war designs: Shortages of skilled pilots (after Midway), specialized metals, & high-octane fuel. There was no lack of engineering ability.
In aircraft design, I don’t believe the Japanese were reliant on “outside help”. The Japanese had a very different doctrine of aircraft design and requirements than the Americans.
The Zero fighter’s design was based on a light airframe for maximum manuverability and agility. Unfortunately this was at the expense of armor protection for the aircraft and pilot. Different from US designs which were heavier with self-sealing tanks and armor and could survive getting shot up.
The Japanese did have some newer fighter and bomber designs late in the war to succeed the A6M Zero, but it was too little too late – as they had suffered too many losses of trained air crews by that time, as well as shortages of materials for new aircraft as well as fuel to power them.
A coworker of Chinese origin told me “kaizen” is composed of characters for “Crisis” & “Opportunity.“ It’s easy enough for American management faddists to parrot this, but one thing radically individualistic Westerners may never be able to borrow from Toyota et al. is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_%28Japanese_culture%29
“Group Harmony.” This is drilled into Japanese from their earliest years; the closest Americans ever get to this is probably in the military combat arms; otherwise, nothing could be more different between the cultures.
This is of key importance, I think. U.S. corporate culture generally, and U.S. automaker culture certainly, was one long marked by deep unrelenting hostility between management and labor. That means the American companies effectively had to buy good labor relations, a trend started by Henry Ford with the $5/day wage and that continued well into the 2000s. Management would hose labor with increased production schedules without extra time or people or equipment to do the extra work, unwillingness to listen to process and product improvements, and the like. That set the union workers drinking on the job, leaving the bottles in the doors, and occasionally “working to rule” to slow down production (also a convenient way of highlighting when management expected them to disregard health and safety rules).
And it’s not like factory work is easy. In the mid-2000s, there was exactly one guy on the Expedition line that was responsible for installing the entire dash assembly. This guy had to lift a 300-pound component assembly into place and fasten it. It wasn’t until around 2004 or 2005 that they installed a robotic arm to lift the weight and move it. So imagine that guy in the 1970s back when the companies didn’t care what he thought or how the job impacted his health.
The thing that should be absolutely highlighted, absolutely shouted from the mountaintops, was that it took the Big 3 seeing the “Toyota Way” and taking lessons from Demming that they perhaps shouldn’t treat their employees like shit. Remember that Saturns were initially very well-built because GM basically left the workforce alone and let them build good cars.
Nice-looking group of cars in that top photo, especially the curvaceous 2000GT. I always liked the coupe version of the Mk1 Corona as well.
It also makes me think how Toyota went far less into the oddball styling of some ’70s Japanese cars, especially Datsun. The early-mid 70’s Crown was probabaly their strangest effort, and it was still handsome, if rather unusual.
The ’60s Sport 800 is also pretty odd-looking, although if you accept that it’s trying to look like a little fighter plane, it’s easier to understand.
Yes, every new car benefits from Toyotas practices, but not always in a good way. Now, every car is a bland, metallic gray, four door appliance, with no soul, no individual expression, no driving fun, nothing more than a four wheeled toaster. Yes, they offer good mechanicals, in very mediocre cars that, were it not for their reliability, would have nothing going for them.
Your comment is one that I see all the time, and presumes that once upon a time we all drove around in GTOs, Stage III 455 Skylarks, Z28 Camaros, etc. You think the six cylinder Biscaynes we rode around in as kids had soul and expression?
Toyota doesn’t set the styling, colors and other trends in the market; it doesn’t exactly have monopoly power. And Toyota has built some of the more exciting cars in its time. If you don’t like cars today, it may be convenient to blame Toyota, but there’s no basis in it. You’re not really seeing the bigger picture.
As I keep pointing out, over the years, Toyota has also used their production system to be able to offer a surprising variety of interesting and/or sporty cars: Celica, XX/Supra, MR2, Soarer, et al. The fact that most of those are defunct is certainly not that Toyota didn’t try; the market shifted in the ’90s and the demand just crashed. Looking at the annual sales figures for Toyota’s sporty models in the mid-90s makes that pretty clear. It wasn’t even the GM problem of expecting even niche models to sell 100,000 units — the sales were just plain dreadful by almost any standard.
Talk of cars having “soul” is enthusiast humbug, an argument of last resort against good ordinary cars without sporting pretensions.
Most of the cars that I find that have soul don’t have sporting pretensions, or the ones made sporty that have no business being so and kind of suck at it(very human), in fact I’d argue the ones that are made purely for sportyness are essentially soulless by way of being basically the same in terms of design and equipment, and distinctive differences can only really be accounted for in subjective styling preference or the all important statistical analysis. Only performance cars that have a soul in my mind are old European sports/supercars, since most are so unreliable and finicky(also very human).
This is the problem with all new cars today, engineering and design has evolved and refined itself into being nearly universal – monocoque construction, DOHC engines, buckets and console, aero styling ,and alloys – and on top of that the consolidation of bodystyles and decimation À la carte has basically left us with the same three bodystyles(4 door car, 5 door car, CUV) and the same three options(color, I4 or V6, smaller alloy wheel or bigger alloy wheel). Maybe I have a misguided view on people but we as a species are a whole lot more diverse than what we’re driving now a days.
Exactly what I was getting at. Thanks for elaborating on it. As a guy whose two siblings have bought many Toyotas, and have had numerous issues with them, to include a Camry that self destructed at 69,000 miles, and a RAV4 with 14 recalls and numerous suspension problems, I can attest to the fact that there is another side of the story. All is not peaches and cream with Toyotas. Ask my sister…a lifelong Toyota owner…she’ll never buy another one and classifies her RAV 4 as the worst vehicle she’s ever owned.
Any lifelong Toyota owner’s worst vehicle they’ve ever owned would have to be a Toyota.
The thing is Jimmy, that while Toyota certainly aren’t perfect, over time they have statistically proven to build better cars than anybody else.
TL/DR: A Toyota isn’t always a quality car but that’s the way to bet.
There are still unique, soulful cars today. What Toyota did was they built the volume cars that are what people needed. The AMC Ramblers, Ford Falcons, and Dodge Darts weren’t exactly soulful, either.
I’m not the biggest fan of them, but cars like the Supra and Celica certainly weren’t beige toasters. The Camry and Corolla kind of are, but so were Tauruses, Luminas, and Acclaims.
The Supra and Celica haven’t been made in over a decade, and the one car Toyota makes in the spirit of those that isn’t a toaster doesn’t wear a Toyota badge in the US.
That said there’s nothing wrong with making beige toasters, but there’s a distinction between being a brand who makes dull cars and a dull car brand, Toyota seems to have positioned themselves on the latter, putting cars not fitting of that image (FR/S, LF/A) under the Scion and Lexus badges. The irony is that 1968 ad doesn’t look that different from the current Scion lineup, Toyota’s current one looks more like a 68 Chevy fleet brochure
BTW, Scions are all Toyotas. Just look at any Scion registration or VIN. It’s not legally a separate brand. Kind of like there are now three cars in the Prius family. It’s called a sub-brand. They’re all there in the Toyota show room.
A casual observer isn’t shuffling through registrations or comparing VIN numbers. They see a Scion on the street the only brand identification on it is a Scion badge, not even “Scion by Toyota”, just Scion. Our neighbors constructed a backyard deck without a permit, it’s not legally there, but it’s most certainly there. Selling at the same dealer isn’t particularly meaningful, so are Fords and Lincolns, Jeeps and Chryslers, Buick GMC, ect. They may be under the same corporate umbrella but they certainly aren’t the same. Scion’s not lineup is full of cars that are clearly outside the image cultivated by the Camorllas wearing the true Toyota badge, a lineup of sports cars, coupes, quirky boxes and mini cars, stuff that theoretically appeals to someone who wants a funner car than the safe unexciting appliance the main Toyota lineup is ever more known for.
To muddy things further with regard to the Prius, Toyota calls it the “Prius family”, but unlike Scion, they all wear Toyota badges front and center and on the wheel you turn. Online the Prius family is a subcatagory of Toyota is http://www.toyota.com/prius-family/, whereas Scion has it’s own dedicated site https://www.scion.com/ It certainly seems like there’s a distinction there.
Why Toyota brands Scions separately is something that I may never understand. They have a very good brand loyalty.
Not all current Toyotas are bland. There was the Matrix, and the MR2 Spyder was made until 2007.
Chevrolet has some exciting cars, but there were a lot of Cobalts and Malibus too. I don’t see Toyota making a Corvette fighter, but they’re not all Camrys.
Yes and no.
My state considers Scion to be a Toyota(on my 2011 XB it said Toy TK on the registration.)
It says Toyota on the stickers under the hood (showing engine size etc) and if you pop off one of the trim pieces in it, it will say Toyota.
However if you take the car to the Toyota dealer to have warranty work done on it, they pretend it is not a Toyota and try to get out of working it.
Looking at these four chapters of revolutionary automotive achievement, Toyota registers as a return to virtue after the cynical planned obsolescence and marketing-over-substance of the GM era. Instead of a badge for every pocketbook like GM, Toyota made a sound car for every pocketbook. Too bad we’re all on the hook for keeping the UAW in plunder whether we buy awful cars or not, but at least Toyota made it so we have options and even GM had to make less deadly junk.
Just yesterday I watched a PBS documentary on Ford and 1 thing I took away from the show was that Henry Ford was VERY pragmatic and thought his Model T was THE epitome of practical transportation. He could not comprehend why anyone would rather have a stylish, but more expensive car. In many ways, while it wasn’t his intention, he thought the Model T was all anyone needed in a car. Couldn’t this almost fall under the heading of believing his car was “good enough”?
One of the biggest/most persistent criticisms of Japanese cars used to be that they copied other car manufacturers, usually the British. To their credit, Toyota….and to a smaller extent the other Japanese car makers, did something American car makers were loathe to do: they listened to customer complaints. I also believe criticism from “buff books” (often) weighed heavily on Toyota’s product decisions.
That was his downfall. Continuous Improvement is a constant process in which no one has all the answers. it’s the opposite of Henry, who knew everything and wouldn’t listen to anyone.
Not really the same thing; “good enough” could also be said as close enough. Henry Ford spent a lot of time getting the Model T to be “perfect” (given the limitations of the technology available), part of that was using vanadium steel so that it could be as light as possible while still being strong, part was using black paint that dried quicker to speed production. Everything was optimised.
Post-WW2 the Japanese manufacturers had partnerships with British, European and American manufacturers, but in many/most cases their development progressed faster than the parent companies. I think they are innately more conservative though, so there is less radical innovation but of course still some, eg the first direct injection gasoline engine in production as a small example.
Then again the US manufacturers were not a hot-bed of innovation after the 1960s, yes they developed some good products but even things like Chrysler minivans or Jeep/Explorer SUVs that broke market ground had been done before elsewhere.
Pragmatic? I call it stubbornness and old Henry almost ruined the company by keeping that car around too long. Lucky for him the Model A was a very good car and Ford kept on.
While I admire what Toyota has done for the automobile industry and also love Toyota’s vehicles of the past (Supra, Celica, USA Market Hilux and the first generation Tacoma) I will not own another Toyota after owning a 2011 Scion XB and the trouble of dealing with arrogant dealerships for warranty work. Toyota dealers used every trick in the book in order to get out of doing any warranty work on my XB even though I had the 3yr-36000 mile bumper to bumper warranty active and a extended Toyota warranty to boot. I also had gotten all services done at Toyota. In the end I dumped the Scion at a loss of $1000 but was more then happy to see the back of that car.
I will never ever buy another Toyota. I would rather walk everywhere. Toyota oughta remember that Hubris and arrogance almost killed GM.
My folks close friends had a similar experience with a 2006 XLE V6 Camry back in 2012. That dog of a car spent much time at the dealer for failed intake gaskets, expensive exhaust work, wheel bearings, window regulators, leaks and bad seals, transmission shifting issues and other suspension related problems. The arrogant dealer raked these folks over the coals and as you stated used every trick in the book to get at there wallets. They now own two Ford products and are much happier with both the cars and the dealer.
“a system of continuous improvement that became a corporate obsession to find ever greater inefficiencies along with improvements in quality.”
I am quite certain this should read “efficiencies”.
The article is excellent! No doubt you apply “kaizen” to your writing.
Fixed. Thanks for stopping the assembly line! 🙂
Continuous Improvement perhaps had its roots in Frederick Winslow Taylor, the original Efficiency Expert who developed Time & Motion studies. His influence, for better or worse, was profound, reaching even the Soviet Union.
“It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements & working conditions, & enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards & enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.”
As one can see however, his was more of a top-down point of view.
Bleh, see you all in a week lol
Paul, I think there’s a small typo in the story. Shouldn’t General Motors be chapter 3 if Toyota is chapter 4.
Thanks so much for your wonderful auto blog. ????
Yes, and thank you!
Just realized that four of the seven Toyota products in the lead photo were purchased new by my relatives. Dutch immigrants to my locale in Canada were early adopters of Toyota products, undoubtedly because the tiny Toyota operation was the only dealership in the area that was owned by a Dutch guy.
I only have photos of my Uncles Landcruiser, pictures probably exist of the others but they’d be in Dad’s slide library somewhere…
Looking forward to Toyota week, now if my Grandfather had bought a 2000GT instead of a Corona we’d be getting somewhere.
I had a ’69 Corolla that looked exactly like the ’68 in the picture only battleship grey color. It had been wrecked and rebuilt. Never had any problems with it and never got under 25 mpg. The little 1100 cc engine would gladly rev to 6500 rpm something I did quite frequently. Had it two years got more than I paid for it when I sold it. Another car I wish I had kept.
Toyota may be the best thing to have happened to the American auto-buying consumer since the Model T.
It doesn’t really matter that in recent years they’ve become just another car company…what matters is how they modeled their “kaizen”, and that they modeled it long enough to make the domestic competition pay attention. As Paul noted above, Ford was the first to adjust but now it seems like even Chrysler and GM have received the message.
There’ll always be pressure to reach a price point, but longer-term thinking should win out where possible. I’d think you’d WANT your offerings to hold up well as used vehicles, is there a better commercial for your company’s new line than a customer satisfied with the present one?
Lost to history is the fact that the Tri-Five Chevies made great used cars, especially in contrast to rusty ’57 Fords and rusty, poorly built ’57 Plymouths. That durability, as much as their styling, engineering or performance, is what made the Tri-Fives icons.
My wife and I have owned a half-dozen Toyotas (assorted models) over the past 20 years or so. All of them were well put together and, as far as I can tell, well engineered. My wife’s current driver is a 2009 Highlander; with the base I4, six speed auto and FWD. I don’t drive it very often other than vacation trips. It certainly is not a hot rod but I have never felt unsafe merging into freeway traffic or passing other cars. I usually drive 75-80 on the Interstates and the Highlander has plenty in reserve; the transmission’s shift points are well matched to the engine’s torque curve. I’m sure that some have had bad experiences with Toyotas but compared to some of the “American” cars we’ve owned, the Toyotas have been shining examples of reliability.
“Welcome to Toyota week” See you in a week, then. They just don’t appeal to me.
And why is the Powerglide a ‘Deadly Sin’ when the 2 speed Toyoglide isn’t?
The Toyoglide was around until the mid 1970s, at least here in Australia.
If a two speed auto that hung on into the 70s is a deadly sin for one carmaker, it deserves to be one for the other!
I never said the PG was a Deadly Sin. I asked the question whether it was a DS or a GM’s Greatest Hit.
Then there’s the fact that GM had a bit of a head start with its PG compared to Toyota, which came out back in 1951. By 1973 or so, it was well past retirement age.
Finally, there’s the fact that the Toyoglide appears not to have cut performance as much as the PG. 0-60 times were about the same than with the standard three-speed manual Corona. That would not have been the case with a PG Chevy.
The latter is harder to judge because Toyota didn’t generally use the same axle ratios with all transmissions; automatics typically got a shorter (higher numerical) ratio than manual four-speeds.
If you want to know (a lot) more about how Toyota revolutionised car production, and influenced businesses in many sectors to adopt Lean principles, I recommend Womack and Jones’s excellent book “The Machine That Changed the World”.
You may want to read this one: Toyota, by Dennis Chambers.
Eventually I should get Taichi Ohno’s book and keep it in my personal library. Direct from the horse’s mouth.
I would also suggest a 1985 book by Michael Cusumano entitled The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology & Management at Toyota & Nissan, which explores this area in depth, and with less of the sensationalism that’s often applied.
While I really like pre-1980 american cars and I think some were quite good. I have to say that newer Toyotas are generally better and they stay reliable and require less repairs as they age..
Both of my daily drivers are well used Toyotas (a 15 years old Camry V6 and a 23 years old 4×4 SR5 pickup) and both still require minimal maintenance and rarely cause trouble. I got my pickup with 124,000 miles on it in 2009 and I traveled another 102,000 miles with it since and it still runs well. I also had a few more well-used Toyotas over the years and they were all great vehicles.
Two requests for the upcoming week, if possible:
1. A copy of the first ever American review of a Toyota, which I believe was the 1958 Toyopet.
2. A reprinting of the MAD magazine parody of Japanese cars, sometime in the mid-60’s. I still have vague memories of the one page cartoon, which parodied Japanese cars as motor powered children’s pedal cars.
Sour grapes? Anyone who doesn’t follow scheduled maintenance has only themselves to blame; even Consumer Reports says this. Manufacturers are only liable if their products fail & are maintained properly.
The Toyota dealership nearby celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. The (late) father of the current owner started the business in 1965. Like father, like son….
The very first Toyota I vividly remember is a circa 1970 white Corolla. My school teacher, an elderly woman, owned it in the early seventies. It was parked right across the street, clearly visible from our class room. Always super clean.
The Toyota way is ingrained into Toyota’s culture since the very moment the eldest Toyoda started making looms more than 100 years ago. BTW, they still have a company that builds looms. It’s part of the company’s ADN.
Although I won’t downplay Deming’s role in shaping Japan’s postwar industry, it needs to be said that TPS was built on several pillars, like Ford’s pre-WW2 production systems, American supermarkets product replenishment and Toyota’s own limitations and problems (including a near bankruptcy). It took years to take shape and become what we know as the Toyota Production System (or Toyota Way or Lean or whatever, depending on who you read and the flavour of the day). And it is continuously evolving.
The fact that it is Toyota’s DNA and not just a “recipe” is what makes it so hard to implement to the same level.
In my opinion, the real revolution or Chapter 4, is the successful integration into a cohesive system of what was known to work across different industries to solve, of course, Toyota’s own problems. The rest, as they say, is history.