Lazy? long hours, multiple jobs, no vacations. America is still the most productive country. And the way I hear it the plants toyota and mazda and the like build in america produce better and more efficiently than their brother and sister plants in the home country. Without coming in 2 hours early and leaving 2 hours late. Americans still produce with higher returns. Never denegrate the american worker out of ignorance. Every worker on earth is represented in America’s workforce. Who would expect anything other than competition?

miket, isnt’ that the Japanese work philosophy? Americans are at the extreme of laziness, but those guys sacrifice everything including the family for work. Of course trying to impose one to another will result only in disaster. But whatever… I completely agree with this:

“but complaints continue to roll in about V6 engine sludging, and decreasing interior quality — including cheaper materials and less solid construction.”

I work with some ex GM managers who claimed the same reasons and similar working conditions when leaving GM in the late 80’s early 90’s. There is nothing worse for a manager than to work very hard, and (for no fault of your own) not gain any traction. This seems like a very un-toyota trend, considering their internal commitment to continuos improvement.

Toyota will find themselves slowly slipping if they can’t reverse this

My sister bought a ‘02 Acura TL. great for about a month, she was ecstatic. V6, vroomy, girl car. Then she started getting hit with mechanical issues, and recalls. the recalls on this vehicles have gotten so bad they threatened to require a full priced extended warranty for any future recall service. Transmission, electrical, fuel system, suspension. I doubt there is more than a third of the car that hasn’t been touched by the recall and “manufacturer issue” service bug.

Everyone has recalls, its what happens when you have such a large manufacture of vehicles and so many sales and units and different suppliers and designs. The difference is the Big3 have maintained a low recall level even at their highest sales levels, even at the lowest ends of their quality spectrums. Toyota and honda on the other hand have steadily increased their recalls to the point that now that toyota has usurped GMs top spot they have geometrically surpassed GMs recalls, and thats with their “higher quality materials and engineering”

The japanese manufacturers have only ever made precisely engineered granny-mobiles. You drive it outside of its envelope, which for a corolla seems to be somewhere between 25 and 35 MPH 24/7, the car fails. Sludge, blown gaskets, bad trannies and suspensions. etc.

The profits and ability to sell vehicles they do have an advantage over thebig3, being without the major unions and being able to pay their workers less than the big3 do. But realities of big-time automotive manufacturing are telling and its going to eat away at them. The tallest tree is the one first cut. Just as GM was the brass ring, so to will Toyota become. And whereas GM had a history of soulful and classic vehicles to draw from all toyota will have will be decades of econoboxes. No soul, no panache, just tedious looks and finicky engineering.

I don’t like fanboyism for either side, but the overt hubris and arrogance of the Japanese side is striking to me. And the Big3 side ends up just sounding slow because nothing new ever gets said, its a staid argument, no one researches or looks for what really puts something out there for discussion. So its endless blathering back and forth. Discussion should lead somewhere, most of this is leading nowhere.

And most of these so called recalls are actually VOLUNTARY on Toyota. Show me any other manufacturer in history that has been willing to offer mass repairs of vehicles several years outside the warranty. For instance, for oil gel, Toyota established the program long before they were ever sued. The lawsuit basically established the parameters. Toyota has done this generously with other customer concerns like run flat tires, where Toyota legally does not have any requirement to assist customers. They also did this with head gasket failures well outside warranty.

It’s not because Toyota was bullied into offering these programs, it’s because it is the right thing to do for customers.

This is the main reason why Toyota sells and has repeat customers. It is because of our customer service.

Yes, you probably are the only one annoyed haha. That’s not what they’re aiming for.