Buffalo Boy's Blog

Toyota is about to post its first annual loss in 70 years. Yes they had a bad year but when you look deeper, there are clear cut differences between them and the big three US car makers.

More people are buying Toyota's world wide than people buying US cars. There is no denying that difference. Toyota is going to pass GM as the worlds leading car manufacturer. 70 years of profits for Toyota and they like the majority of companies, car or otherwise, are having a bad year. One bad year out of 70 isn't too shabby I'd say.

The other difference between Toyota and GM, is that Toyota builds cars people want to drive that are higher quality and last longer than US cars.

What should be alarming to US car makers is that in Toyota's worst year, they out sold all other auto manufacturers. Toyota will reinvent themselves and comeback with new and improved models and when the economy bounces back, Toyota will still be on top and they will be hard to compete with especially on a global scale.

GM and the other US carmakers have been having problems for years now and couldn't seem to reinvent their industry. They didn't change to meet the times and when they started to try, they came out with pieces of crap like the Chevy Cobalt and the Ford Focus which are garbage cars.

They continued to feed us the SUV's and trucks despite higher gas prices and a consumer demand for smaller, more fuel efficient alternatives. They failed. Toyota has had huge marketing success with the Toyota Prius and the Yaris.

Its going to be a long way back if they can get back into it at all, loan or no loan, the big three have some tough competition from Toyota and other foreign makers for that matter. The US is no longer the best in the auto industry. There is a new top dog now and they are Japan. Will it motivate or will US car companies die a slow painful death? I think it will be the latter. They have done too little to win new consumers and there are those like myself who have always bought foreign and quite honestly, I have never had a problem with any of the three foreign cars Ihave owned.