Toyota to Detroit: We Will Bury You

[wmarhel]

Excerpts from Article taken by from the Wall Street Journal Online presented here for discussion purposes only........

Originally Posted by Wall Street Journal Online

Column: EYES ON THE ROAD
By JOSEPH B. WHITE

Toyota to Detroit: We Will Bury You
Lexus Flagship Bristles With New Features
That Up the Ante as Detroit Rivals Wobble

September 25, 2006;

Toyota Motor Corp. has a message for its struggling rivals in Detroit: We will bury you.

Of course, Toyota's leaders are far too diplomatic and cautious to say something as outrageous as that out loud.

Instead, Toyota delivers its message in more subtle ways. Such as bringing the new Lexus LS 460 to a hotel within sight of Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn, Mich., headquarters and innocently demonstrating the fact that the new top-of-the-line Lexus has a feature that allows the car to park itself, with the driver playing a minor supporting role.


See video2 of the Lexus LS 460 feature that allows the sedan to park itself, without the driver touching the wheel.This is one of those see-it-to-believe-it features (See video3). But the LS 460 can use an array of sonar distance-finding devices linked to the navigation system that can slide the car into a parallel-parking slot without the driver touching the steering wheel.

While you are admiring that trick, you can ponder that the LS 460's lustrous paint job is the result of a new painting process that involves robots specifically developed for the LS production line that can buff the car's curvy body along six different axes, instead of just up and down. And when the robots are done, Lexus has workers who go over the finish by hand.

The LS 460 has an eight-speed automatic transmission -- an industry first -- a state-of-the-art aluminum V-8 engine that cranks out 380 horsepower and is expected to get 19 miles to the gallon in the city and 27 miles to the gallon on the highway. (The Cadillac STS's Northstar V-8 by comparison is rated at 320 horsepower, 17 city and 26 mpg highway.) The long wheelbase, limo version of the new LS has an optional climate-control system that uses infrared sensors to detect whether occupants are overheating. The car has systems that sense a crash coming and prepare the brakes and airbags for impact -- a system similar in intent to one available on top end Mercedes cars.

The car's headlights were redesigned after the chief engineer decided the original prototypes didn't look enough like crystal. So he had a new prototype headlight made out of crystal, and had the supplier copy the look. The list goes on, and on and on.

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Toyota chose last week to mention that it expects profits in the six month period that ends Sept. 30 will be 500 billion yen (or about $4.29 billion). Toyota's confident outlook, and its declaration that it intends to expand global vehicle sales to 9.8 million by 2008, an 11% increase from this year, stood in sharp contrast to the torrent of bad news hitting Detroit over the past several days. On a single day, Sept. 15, Ford outlined plans6 to hack 44,000 people off the payroll and Chrysler disclosed a likely $1.5 billion third quarter loss.

As for those quality problems that have been embarrassing Toyota over the past year or so, Toyota said it will attack them by hiring 8,000 engineers. This is more bad news for Detroit, since some of those 8,000 will likely be Ford, Chrysler or GM engineers who decide that, all things considered, working for Toyota is a better idea. The Toyota hiring binge says something else, namely that Toyota can afford to add nearly $1 billion a year worth of people to its payroll to keep its growth rolling.

Even as Toyota executives sketch out plans to become the world's biggest auto maker, they still cling to the institutional inferiority complex that has characterized the corporate culture for more than 50 years, since the days when Toyota engineers humbly toured Ford's massive Rouge manufacturing complex in search of clues about how to make cars.

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So if you were wondering why GM, Ford and now Chrysler have been acting like the proverbial guys being chased through the woods by a grizzly bear, now you know what the bear looks like.

[Randy]

Old news pardner, they started the plan to do this over 60 years ago after WW2. Remember, Detroit wanted nothing to do with PDCA and all that and the Japanese jumped on it.

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by Randy

Old news pardner, they started the plan to do this over 60 years ago after WW2. Remember, Detroit wanted nothing to do with PDCA and all that and the Japanese jumped on it.

It may be old news, but the folks running GM, Ford, Daimler seem to have missed the announcement for those 60 years. Perhaps they need the wax flushed out of their ears.

[Randy]

All they need to do is look at sales figures and in their employee parking lots.

[RCBeyette]

Very good point, Randy. I once worked for a company which was acquired by Daimler-Chrysler. This meant we were entitled to the employee discount. At first, everyone was excited and spent their breaks looking at cars online and contemplating which model they'd purchase. Out of nearly 300 employees, no one purchased a new car through this programme. We all pretty much said that we'd stick with our current cars and when they died (which wouldn't be too long), we would all be looking at Toyotas and Hondas. Speaks volumes in my opinion.

[gpainter]

Looks like Toyota is becoming Americanized! To combat the quality problems they are hiring 8000 engineers

[DsqrdDGD909]

"the result of a new painting process that involves robots specifically developed for the LS production line that can buff the car's curvy body along six different axes, instead of just up and down."

I'm a little "spatial relationships" challenged - but what are the 6 axes? I typically think of three x,y,z.

[ScottK]

Originally Posted by DsqrdDGD909

"the result of a new painting process that involves robots specifically developed for the LS production line that can buff the car's curvy body along six different axes, instead of just up and down."

I'm a little "spatial relationships" challenged - but what are the 6 axes? I typically think of three x,y,z.

x, x', y, y', z, z'

x', y', z' are only visible in the dimension of $$$.