Toyota cannot make cars fast enough
As the manufacturer of the Corolla, Yaris and other popular small cars and the leading seller of hybrids, Toyota should have benefited from soaring fuel prices. Instead, its U.S. dealers found themselves stocked with Toyota and Lexus trucks they couldn't sell, and short of small, fuel-efficient cars.
At a meeting last month in Salt Lake City, dealers pressed Toyota's top U.S. managers to explain why the carmaker renowned for its responsiveness and flexibility couldn't provide them with more small cars.
"They're maxed out in production of Corolla and Camry cars in North America, and there's nothing more the U.S. staff can do," said Rosario Criscuolo, a Michigan dealer with showrooms in Lansing and Ann Arbor who attended the meeting.
The dramatic shifts in the U.S. auto market this year surprised Toyota, along with everyone else. "I don't think the management we have now at Toyota has ever seen anything of this sort." In the past 50 years, Toyota steadily expanded its presence in the United States, advancing through strong and weak markets to become the No. 2 player this year behind General Motors Corp. But the once-unstoppable
Japanese juggernaut is now grappling with problems more commonly associated with Detroit's ailing Big Three — large inventories of unsold trucks and under-used factories. "Toyota is no longer considered immune from the market forces at work in the United States," said Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst at Global Insight. 750 temporary workers out
Toyota already had warned investors in May that its annual profits would fall for the first time in seven years because of weakening demand in the United States, where analysts estimate it generates half its earnings. Toyota is taking tough measures at its U.S. operations, shedding around 750 temporary workers at its truck and engine factories. Detroit News