Whenever production and demand are out of balance, you have incentives. Toyota and Honda have the advantage of a more clean-sheet approach, so they have capacity more in balance with demand.
What has made this revolution possible is that Toyota is a company with a focus on technology, because we think innovation is the future of our company. So we cannot fall behind. We are trying very hard, and it is very difficult.
Toyota wound up with this paradox. They're selling a car meant for young people to older people. It's not where they wanted to be.
Toyota was searching for perfection and wanted the highest rating in every individual category, not just a good overall evaluation, so the company made a minor change in the wiring to some of the LS 430's airbag sensors and asked for another test.
Toyota started studying U.S. small-car possibilities in 2001. We began understanding how big generations X and Y would be and how ... small cars were getting bigger and more expensive. We saw opportunity.
Toyota's momentum just continues to snowball. If I'm one of the guys running Ford or GM, at this point I'm deeply concerned about how quickly Toyota is accelerating.
Toyota really believes that we need to manufacture vehicles, engines and other parts where we sell out vehicles. This allows us to do that quicker.
Toyota once again raised the bar for the family sedan.
Toyota obviously has staked a lot of its prestige on this technology, so if there is a developing negative backlash in the U.S., they are going to work very hard to reverse that.
Toyota just saves and saves in a million little ways and then uses that money as a club against its competitors.