Honda and Toyota shut out of May 2011 top-10 best-seller list

[GoCougs]

You Toyota haters are going to have to try/troll a heckuva lot harder than that...

[CJ]

You Toyota haters are going to have to try/troll a heckuva lot harder than that...

It's not hating if it's the truth.  Toyota does not build near the quality of vehicle that they did 10 years ago.  There is no denying that the Corolla is nothing special.  It's a car...and that's the beauty of it.  It doesn't do anything particularly poorly, nor does it excel at anything.  It's not particularly comfortable nor is it quick, but it's dead reliable and not too bad to look at in some trim levels, though the updated one doesn't look so great.

[Morris Minor]

i've always thought that the measure of major car manufacturers is not their upmarket models, but their lowly appliance cars. Engineering excellent inexpensive transport requires substantially more thought and ingenuity.

[Eye of the Tiger]

Hyundai kicks the ass of everyone, mang.

[sportyaccordy]

Cougsworld- where assumption and fact are interchangeable

[Atomic]

I don't know the particulars of your issue, or even what you drive. I can tell you that I know people who work in the service departments of dealerships that sell Japanese cars. Amazingly, they are some busy guys. Maytag repairmen? Not.

look at their sales numbers and think of oil changes alone at every 3,000 miles for each car, truck, minivan, suv... yadda, yadda, yadda (steinfield episode reference)... that would keep them pretty busy 

[Atomic]

wow... the horrific damage affects all markets, it seems...

Toyota Chief Sees Return to Full Global Output in November

June 4, 2011 - 4:16 am ET

SEOUL (Reuters) -- The president of Toyota Motor Corp. said on Saturday he expects the automaker to resume full production globally in November and its Japanese output is expected this month to recover to 90 percent of levels seen before a March earthquake.

"We are restoring (production) at fast speeds despite ongoing aftershocks," Akio Toyota, the grandson of the company's founder, told reporters during a visit to South Korea.

"We expect our output to recover to normal from November... For Japan's domestic production, we expect to resume 90 percent of our normal output this month," he said.

Toyota and its local rivals have been plagued by shortages of hundreds of components after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 damaged factories in Japan's northeast.

Ahead of schedule

Production at Toyota is returning to pre-quake levels faster than the company anticipated, with output in June likely to reach 90 percent of pre-quake levels, a company spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

That more optimistic outlook compares with a prediction last month for production to return to 70 percent of normal.

The president said in April that a complete recovery was expected in November or December.

Still, in 2011 overall production may be almost a million vehicles less than Toyota had planned to build at the beginning of the year. Lost output by the end of May was 900,000 cars.

Because Toyota builds 38 percent of its cars in Japan compared with a smaller 25 percent at Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., the impact at Japan's biggest auto company has been greater.

Encouraging dealers

The president visited South Korea, a small market for the auto giant, to "encourage dealers," a Toyota Korea representative said, at a time when the automaker is suffering from a sales slump in the wake of the quake and a recall crisis.

Toyota's Lexus sales dived 51 percent in April in South Korea from a year ago, while other Toyota vehicle sales slid 41 percent, even as the imported vehicle market grew 14 percent led by vehicles from German carmakers, according to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.

Last year, Toyota sold a combined 10,486 Lexus and other models in the South Korean market dominated by Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors .

A shortage of parts resulting from disrupted supply chains means it has lost ground in overseas markets. On June 2, Toyota said it sold only 38,500 cars in China during May, 35 percent less than a year ago.

In the United States, its main foreign market, sales in May slumped 33 percent.

In contrast, South Korean rivals Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors posted 35 percent sales growth and a record-high combined market share last month in the key market, putting their combined U.S. sales almost on par with that of Toyota.