All Entries Tagged With: "toyota"
Top 10 Toyota Stories of 2010
Has there been a more important year in Toyota’s U.S. history than 2010? Toyota experienced a once-in-a-lifetime scandal, took an unprecedented action and stopped building or selling key models for 10 days, became the target of a $10 billion dollar lawsuit, and yet somehow managed to increase truck sales 15% in 2010 compared to 2009.
Has 2010 been a good year for Toyota? No. But it hasn’t been bad…at least not as bad as some people projected. Toyota’s culture seems to be undergoing a change, and consumers are slowly but surely warming back up to Toyota.
Here are the top 10 Toyota stories of the past year:
The UAW is Poised For Growth – Are Toyota, Honda, and Nissan Ready?
For years, casual observers of the auto industry were quick to point to the UAW as a source of trouble for GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Tales of do-nothing jobs banks and $70/hour compensation were the source of a popular disdain for the UAW and unions in general, and the UAW found it very difficult to attract new members in this climate.
Today, things are quite a bit different. While it says here that the UAW wasn’t perfect, anyone with a real knowledge of the auto industry will acknowledge that the UAW deserves only a part of the blame for the meltdown of GM and Chrysler. The fact is, terrible management, poor quality, and poor designs were the primary sources of GM and Chrysler failure.
The UAW hall in Bowling Green, Kentucky (pictured) might be the most important union battleground of the 21st century.
The good news for the UAW is that all of this is behind them now. The UAW is now more likely than ever to recruit Toyota, Honda, and Nissan workers over the next 2 to 5 years. Here’s why:
Toyota 3.5L Lexus V6 Best Engine Award
Ward’s, a popular automotive industry publication, recently announced the top 10 engines for 2008. The Honda 3.5L SOHC V-6 and GM’s 3.6L DOHC V-6 made the list, but the 3.5L Lexus V6 was voted the number one engine of 2008.
Red IS350”s are known to go about 3% faster than all other colors. Photo courtesy of Lexus.com.
