Relentless pursuit of mediocrity: Toyota including its Lexus brand no longer stand for quality
I know dear readers it has been a while since my last post. Family illness matters have taken up a large amount of my free time these past months.
I have a little more free time and figured what better subject to relaunch the blog with than the current fiasco Toyota Motor Co. is facing, especially here in the US.
Along with Honda, Toyota changed the whole notion of automotive quality and consistency teaching a lesson to both the Americans and Europeans about how to build a car Americans will buy and buy again that is a good value and highly dependable. In recent years Toyota's marketshare increased greatly especially due to its success with the Camry model.
Toyota also changed the luxury car game with the introduction of Lexus 20 years ago. That brand become the poster child for reliable dependable luxury and in short order put Mercedes and BMW on notice they were here to stay and command attention. They introduced innovation after innovation including a car that can park itself...(wouldn't want to try that given their accelerator problem).
Lexus touted its slogan, "Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" and the halo built from this brand helped the overall Toyota brand image improve and dominate car buying.
In recent weeks we have learned that the armor does indeed have a flaw and the unintended acceleration problem (going back as far as 2002 and well covered up... I now understand) got so out of hand that millions of cars (I believe more than last year's production worth) have to be recalled. Government information indicates Toyota looked for excuse after excuse (similar to Audi's nearly suicidal move in the 80s) to explain away the unintended acceleration problem. Now they have been forced to deal with the problem, its cost and the bigger issue the demise of the once quality is king image, especially with Lexus. In my opinion Lexus should drop the "Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" slogan for a while because people are just snickering these days.
Is this a case of assuming brand image can cover all ills? It can for a while but just a while, reality does set in and consumers do not like to be fooled and taken advantage of for too long. It is not easy to recover from massive quality mistakes that a car maker tries valiantly to make the fault of the "stupid" driver putting the floor mat in a bad place...and with the state of the world economy, Toyota can't really afford this image damage.
The good news or silver lining? Maybe more American's will see that Ford and GM (what's left of it) actually make pretty good cars these days, thanks to Toyota, and are worth buying again.
Watching out for you everyday.
Eli
Whatever may be Lexus is one fine luxury creation from Toyota. The upcoming Lexus models does have the capacity to attract new customers.
Posted by: new car dealer warren | February 20, 2011 at 11:31 PM