Tag: Toyota

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Porsche: 1 – Toyota: 0

Many people will say Toyota is the most reliable car earth. My uncle’s sister’s daughter’s nephew’s son has a Toyota and it never break down. Yes, that’s true! Your unknown relative’s Toyota may not break down for long year but it does not anything to break down. I have never heard a very innovative technology from Toyota. They are just saying reliability and dull looking. Okay, Lexus introduced some new technologies but they don’t like to take these kinds of risks. However, a very primitive part of the car caused Toyota to collapse. Gas pedal!
J.D. Power announces reliability index every year for automotive brands. Research is conducted in USA but it provides a good perspective understand which is better and which is worse. And interesting there is an unexpected brand in first place; Porsche :) Yes, the sports car manufacturer who is expert in producing 911. Now it is the most reliable manufacturer on the list. Interestingly Porsche’s have many new technology even in facelifts. For instance; face lifted 911 Turbo is offering a new technology which reduces engine movement during cornering. Hydralic system is working like a suspension for engine and it prevent engine to cause under steer or over steer, as it is the heaviest part of the car. Also PDK, double clutch auto transmission, many electronic systems.
Sorry Toyota, you are the best anymore! Even if you did not have the problem with gas pedal, still you don’t take risks like Porsche to offer new technologies. By the way, Mercury and Buick are also more reliable than Toyota.
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Cars

Cry me a river, Toyota!

Finally Akio Toyoda cried! Toyota is suffering serious problems with gas pedal, brake pedal and steering wheeling. As you can see there are the main basic parts of a car :) And we don’t how, Toyota managed to break the down. Actually this is not something very very unusual, Mercedes had problems with electronic brake SBC in 2004. And many more cases happened similar to this.
The interesting point, as I mentioned earlier, Toyota does not have any other attributes rather than been durable. Nobody will dream a Toyota Corolla because of its design or nobody will fall in love with interior design or ergonomics. Just durable. When the durable car became endurable, Toyota is trying to pull the ejecting seat lever to get rid of these problems in a quick way.
As far as I read on newspaper, this is something very common in Japan to cover things up. But it won’t work in these parts of the world. Let’s remember when Mercedes had the SBC problem did someone come in front of the cameras and started to cry? Of course not. Come on, you did not break up with your wife. You should have predicted this problem before, when you produce more you make more problems.
Let’s see what will come next from Desperate Toyota Bosses! And to cheer up Toyota managers a song from Justing Timberlake is coming, Cry Me A River :)
Crying Toyota;
And Justing;
Picture is from;
Toyota Website
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Cars

New advertisement campaign song for Toyota!

Nowadays Toyota is suffering the worst times of its history. The very basic parts of a car started to broke down in Toyota. Steering wheel, brake pedal and gas pedal. These three parts are on produciton for many many many years. I already discussed about this but now I found something for Toyota :)
Actually this blog would be more understandable if you know Turkish. The song for Toyota’s advertisement campaign should play Turkish singer Ismail YK’s Bas Gaza. For those of you, who don’t him. Germany borned Turkish song writer, his songs are similar to Fifty Cent. Believe you won’t listen most of them. However one of his “interesting” songs “Press the Gas” is fitting very well with Toyota’s current condition :)
Here is the video clip;

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Cars

Today, Tomorrow, Emotions, Toyota

Empire of robustness started to fall into parts. Toyota constructed its brand identity based on high quality production techniques, problem free cars and reliability and ignoring status value, a design philosophy, increasing interior material quality. Until last couple of weeks, being problem free was enough to sell millions of cars every year. However, a tiny problem with gas pedal was adequate to prepare a huge domino effect on Toyota.
In any aspect of life, you need to divide your assets into different places to reduce the risks. They are doing this in stock exchange; investors buy different shares and in case of emergency their loss is minimized. If they invest everything on one paper, they might have huge return but any fluctuations will destroy everything.
Toyota did something similar to investing all your wealth into one share, and they avoided reducing the risk by separating them. When you think about Toyota, you will probably think about Japanese good prices, good quality and dull looking car. Toyota never focused on design, status icon, product image as much as they focused on problem free. What they have done is a very good thing but they should have focused on other aspects to strength their brand image.
Let’s think about Alfa Romeo and Mercedes. Alfa Rome has a very bad reputation for breaking down, nowadays break down issues reduced but that’s a part of Alfa Romeo. However, this does not prevent people to buy Alfa Romeo. I would definitely buy a MiTo instead of idiotic looking Toyota Yaris. MiTo has the passion, design and Italian style, with potential problems. But those other assets of Alfa Romeo’s brand image motivating people to purchase an Alfa Romeo and ignoring the failing fact! And people still buying Alfa Romeo and they could emerge emotional relationship with their car but with Toyota it is impossible. The only relationship which you can make is the green digital clock! Toyota ignored the emotional part of marketing!
Mercedes suffered a worse problem in 2004 with electronic braking system SBC. It was an innovative electronic braking pedal which works totally electronic. And it broke down! Suddenly, in some cars it did not wish to slow down the car. Mercedes faced huge profit loss and recalled many cars. But did this destroy Mercedes totally? Of course not, because Mercedes had other attributes associated to brand. Like; status value, smooth riding quality, high quality interior, eye catching design. All these assets helped Mercedes to recover more easily and people never forgot the SBC problem totally.
So, Toyota does not have any strong assets to sustain its brand image and recover easily. They could invest on advertisements and PR campaigns heavily to recover all these. But they should revise their policy about manufacturing cars! As I can see from their green digital clock, they treat car as a calculator and they ignore the fact that people might associate different attributes to a car and those attributes can save the brand in case of emergency.

Pictures are from;
EuroNCAP Website
Alfa Romeo Website
Mercedes Website

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Cars

Ford has acceleration issue!

Toyota is suffering serious problems with gas pedal and sudden acceleration. Usual Toyota’s does not wish to accelerate but this time, problem is extremely serious and it is going to destroy its reputation!
And Ford started to make profit! It is also sudden like Toyota’s problem. Because, Ford and Profit words never used together for a long long long time. However, during last years Ford sold everything they owned. Land Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Volvo. Also they closed some of the production plants. And they started to make profit! Really? How long you can sustain this profit level? For two months?
Ford is still has the old, unsuccessful, and failure making approach. You sold everything what you were expecting? Huge loss! Ford lost so much money, I cannot even remember it. This profit level will not satisfy anyone and twitting some “funny” cartoon will not have impact. I really cannot understand, US has the best Business Schools on earth but Ford cannot find people to create “proper” profit!
These tactics have the same efficiency as much as your inefficient petrol V8s. Ford; Wake Up and Think Twice!
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Cars

Today, Tomorrow, Recall Toyota

Toyota has the reputation of problem free manufacturer for a long time. Despite its ridiculous design and plastic obsessed interior, Toyota cars do not tend to break down very easily and they never received a serious recall from service.
However there are some facts about manufacturing and manufacturing fault. Every production has a certain percentage of production failure and this is scientifically proofed. And small failures tend to occur in every car brand. And this has positive correlation with production size; as the production increases, failures tend to increase more. Companies like Toyota, Ford, Fiat, Mercedes, VW have high potential of failures; however in order to prevent these they have various quality checks. Toyota has one of the best quality control systems in automotive industry until it failed! Now Toyota recalls more than two millions of cars because throttle pedal problem. Yes, a very basic thing is very close to destroy Toyota’s reputation!
Unlike other brands, Toyota does not associate with sport, comfort or status vehicle. It is mainly associated with high quality, problem free, reasonable priced elements and when one of these elements started to erode, it tends to create a domino effect and the whole reputation collapses. If Toyota invested on status, nice design, superb handling or any other elements which can be found in European car brands, Toyota can survive with them also. But losing one of the most vital elements of automotive industry from your brand reputation is not something which can be recovered very easily.
Future of Toyota is not very brilliant after this sudden recall, I always recommended Toyota as it has very production quality despite its lack of good design and lack of character. Now, there is nothing left to promote for Toyota. It is neither fun to drive nor nice to look at it.
I have choosen Toyota Landcruise especially as a picture to show. Because, this shows how Toyota is very good at ruining a very well designed car!
Picture is from;
Toyota
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Cars

Aston Martin Cygnet Targeting Youngs ;)

Aston Martin’s Toyota iQ based new small car Cygnet is targeting youngs. Very interesting! As they announced, Cygnet will be sold only to current Aston Martin owners, I really wonder how they could those young people with Aston Martin :) They could find some in Russia, China and in Gulf Countries! Overall, we can say that, this is the most effective PR campaign every made. Targeting to a group which cannot buy the product! Is this second Smart disaster?
I was expecting to see a more powerul Cygnet and not sharing engine with Toyota. Also, if they could manage to make it rear wheel driven and exhaust bypass valves like in proper Aston Martin. Even if you were driving your micro Aston Martin, you could have the chance to hear similar sound. The most important thing; they should have remapped the engine to produce more power and torque to differentiate from Toyota iQ.
Here is video from Aston Martin;

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Who wants a front wheel drive, 97 horse power Aston Martin?

I pretty sure that, many people will say yes this questions. But I have bad news; as published on NYTimes.com, Cygnet the very small Toyota iQ based Aston Martin is reserved for Aston Martin owners :(
And micro Aston Martin’s engine will not remmaped or increase its power! Why don’t you say more basically we don’t want to invest on new engine, we will try to see with Toyota engine. Very nice decision.
I really want to see how the Russian billionaires and petrol riched Gulf people will comment on this car!
And the price is very reasonable, around £20,000 – £30,000. I cannot deny the interior is very made and it has the Aston Martin design clues but that’s all.
If you want to a buy an Aston Martin based on Toyota with 1.3lt 100 horsepower engine and top speed of 170 km/h and front wheel drive; go for it!
If you buy this car, you won’t have any pleasure like other Aston Martin!
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Cars

Today, Tomorrow, Cheaper, Toyota

I am not a great fan of Toyota, actually I would never buy one but their cars reliable, problem free and doesn’t have soul. Design and interior quality of Toyota is always problem, their design has never been competitive like European brands and their ergonomic, plastic quality is always lower than Germans. Therefore I could not like any Toyota.
Now they have announced that, Toyota is pressing suppliers to reduce their prices up to %30. Guess, what would happen? The quality which I don’t like in Toyotas will be worse. Toyota must increase the interior quality, they don’t have problem with reliability but they should not sacrifices any other quality. Okay, they could not make profit after 60 years, just couple of years bear the loss and increase quality.
Unless, Toyota will never be a real competitors of Germans and customers of German brands will not prefer Toyota.
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Cars

Aston Martin Cygnet

No, it is not a movie part from Terminator.
Cygnet is the new “pure” Aston Martin. I said pure because it is based on Toyota iQ, which is very nice car with sophicticated engineering. But Aston Martin just made a make-up and design a new clothes with same structure from Toyota iQ and will sell it as Aston Martin.
Come on, at least increase the power of the car or remap the engine control unit or any other tricks to make more Aston Martin less Toyota.
So, people will pay a lot extra for Aston Toyota Martin. Sorry but this car won’t sell! Ugly Truth.
Mercedes did with Smart, people do not buy cheap looking cars from luxury brands. Especially for Aston Martin, Cygnet is disaster.
I really admire Dr. Bez but I was not expecting to see too much Toyota too less Aston Martin.
(By the way, it looks like Aston Martin Smart.)