Page 20 - Toyota Under Fire

PREF ACE

managed the feat of not just weathering a crisis, but using that
crisis as an opportunity to push itself further toward its long-term
goals. It didn’t do so by beginning some radical new program or
bringing in new executives with “fresh ideas.” In fact, as one ar-
ticle that was intended as criticism of Toyota for not being more
aggressive in its business response noted, not a single associate at
Toyota has involuntarily lost his or her job as a result of the dual
crises. It’s probably most accurate to say that Toyota turned crisis
into opportunity not by doing something different, but by doing
even more of what it had been doing before the recession or the
recall crisis started.
Considering the nonstop battering that Toyota took, first
from the recession and then from the full force of the U.S. me-
dia and various congressional committees, I was quite impressed
by the resilience of the brand and the business rebound in the
United States. Toyota’s U.S. sales dropped precipitously by 16
percent in January 2010 and 9 percent in February 2010, even
though overall vehicle sales in the United States had increased. By
March, with uncharacteristically high sales incentives (although
still about 30 percent below the U.S. average), Toyota boosted
sales by 35 percent over the prior year, and sales of cars that had
been recalled were up by 48 percent. By May, according to a list
compiled by Reuters, the Camry, Corolla, RAV4, and Prius were
among the 20 top-selling vehicles in the United States and the
Camry had regained the crown as the bestselling midsized car.
Even in November of 2010, when it seemed that Toyota sales
had seriously lost ground to competitors, a closer look only at
retail sales (eliminating the low-profit fleet sales, for example, to
rental car companies) showed that Toyota had 17 percent of the
retail sales market, compared to an average of 18.3 percent in
2009. This did represent a 1.3-percentage-point loss of share, but

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