Toyota races to match model mix of Tundra to the market

Which 'first venture into the full-sized pickup fray' was that? Do you think perhaps they are referring to the 'latest fray?' ;)

mike

Well, there's missteps and then there's missteps...

Right now, Toyota has 45 days of truck inventory (down from 49 last month). Perhaps the Tundra is not doing as well as the Tacoma but we can reasonably presume it's under 60 days.

By way of comparison, Saturn has 125 days of Outlooks on its hands (up from

I'll bet Saturn wishes they were making Toyota's missteps.

You are forgetting there is more that one factor to the unsold inventory number. Toyota royally f*&k*d up the new Tundra plant in Texas, so it is possible their inventory problem would be worse, except they screwed the pooch on the plant that is building the Truck That is Changing Everything. There is also the problem of predicting demand. Where I work the planners are clueless. They look at past trends for some items and just project those into the future without taking other factors into account. In the case of the Outlook, other factors would be higher gas prices, increased competition form other "cross overs," etc. And GM doesn't even seem to be pushing the Outlook. I can't remember seeing a single ad for one. Toyota is blanketing the programs I watch with Tundra ads. As for the Outlook, I haven't seen one on the lot at my local Saturn dealer (I ride by the dealer at least 5 times a week). If they have them, they must be off the front line. Of course a 125 day supply of Outlooks might only be

I did see what I consider to me a funny display at the local Toyota Dealer last night. Right out in front they had a new Tundra sitting on the back of a Ford SuperDuty Rollback (it was there at least from 7 pm to 11:30 pm). I couldn't decide if this was a new truck on display, or one that croaked on the road and had to be hauled in on the rollback. Either way, I think I would have gotten it off the rollback, or at least (if it was a DOA truck) I would have moved it around back. Poor marketing to show your "Truck That is Changing Everything" on a wrecker.

Ed

DUH did it occur to you that GM sells more Outlooks and thus dealers would stock more of them? ;)

mike

Toyota knows if it is to remain a strong seller in the US it must appeal to more US buyers, hence its growth over the past ten years in bigger cars, SUVs and bigger trucks. David Baxter, senior executive administrator at Toyota Technical Center, speaking at the SAE annual convention said; "Our future in the North American market depends on offering American consumers the larger vehicle they prefer. If we are to succeed over the long run in North America we are going to be under a lot more pressure to offer American buyers the lager, SAFER, vehicles they prefer to buy. It is up to our engineer to figure how to build larger, more fuel efficient, safer line of vehicles more suited to the American market than what we currently have available."

The fact is it does not cost much more to build larger safer vehicles than smaller vehicles. Market forces lead to much higher profits on larger vehicles as a result. In the real world it is the larger vehicles that provide the profits to keep down the selling price of the smaller vehicles that help support CAFE to be able to offer large safer vehicles.

mike

Umm... Lutz? Wagoner? Hello in there? Fuel prices have been spiking dramatically, off and on, since 1973 when OPEC first flexed its muscles. Not to be in tune with this is inexcusably stupid.

That's the funny part. A 125-day supply of Outlooks is about 9500. A 45 day supply of GMC Acadias is... about 9500. It didn't occur to GM that maybe people don't go to a Saturn dealer to find gas guzzlers? Admittedly, it doesn't cost a ton of money to badge-engineer an Acadia/Enclave/whatever into an Outlook but it does cost something.

Actually, the nearby Chevy dealer has done the same thing from time to time - at least I presumed the model was on display and not just dragged back for service.

Still, if one looks at a vehicle on the carrier and thinks "repair" rather than "pedestal," well, it's one thing for a single dealer to miscalculate like that; it's orders of magnitude worse to be making bad decisions on models. At least Toyota isn't saddling dealers with high inventory costs on this.

How can that be Toyotas do not break down? What is more to the point just about every foreign car dealer in the country that owns a service truck, has one built by Ford.

mike

Where did you come up with this pile of crap that "just about every foreign car dealer in the country that owns a service turck, has one built by Ford?"

Jeff

For a guy who repeatedly tells us he was in the auto biz, you are remarkably ill-informed about the auto biz. Or any other biz, for the matter of that. Here's one of the basic principles of biz - we use it here, as a matter of fact:

BIG INVENTORY BAD!

Simple enough for ya?

My Toyota dealer has a Hino and a Mitsubishi.

You of course are free to believe whatever you choose, but you might want to look around more often. LOL

mike

And, once again, I believe that you made a statement that you can't back up.

Basically, you're comments are full of shit.

Jeff

That may be your opinion, but what I know is every dealer worth his salt will carry nearly double his inventory to keep up with the spring selling season. When I was Group Sales Manager the partners wanted me to buy the excess allocation of every dealer in the district, to have enough for the spring rush. What was funny many of those dealers had to come to us to get the cars THEY needed. We of course made 3% on every vehicle that may originally have actually been part of THEIR allocation LOL

mike

Of course there are exceptions. The partners for whom I worked owned twenty some multi-franchised stores is six states, that sold just about every brand you can name. Many brand don't make trucks. Around 85% of our tow service trucks were Fords, even for many of the GM and Dodge stores. One reason is the companies that build wreckers and rollback prefer to use Ford Chassis.

Next time you go to a drag strip or small race track take note of the brand of most of the trucks that pulled the cars to the race track. The word at those tracks was, you can't win the race if you can't get to the race track ;)

mike