Word: pickup
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...munching on a corn dog, and you'll get a sense of how the company sees its future. Toyota is constructing its sixth North American assembly plant, in the heart of truck country just outside San Antonio, Texas, aiming to build the next generation of its full-size Tundra pickup there and--if all goes as planned--finally conquer the U.S. truck market. Achieving that feat would mark a milestone for Toyota in its quest to become the great American car company and would follow its conquest of virtually every other market segment, from compact cars to luxury SUVs...
...attended a Texas state fair last year, you might have noticed a group of Japanese men dressed in jeans and boots, gazing at the sea of pickup trucks in the parking area. The men were from Toyota, which has been trying with scant success for years to persuade Americans to dump their Ford and Chevy pickups--the cowboy Cadillacs of the heartland--for a Toyota. Spending hours observing folks as they tailgated, hitched up horse trailers and hauled everything from plywood to goat sheds, the Japanese took copious notes, even if they still couldn't quite understand the American lovefest...
Conquering the truck market won't be easy either, in part for cultural reasons. Pickup country is perhaps the last auto segment in which patriotic shopping habits prevail. Despite years of knocking at the market, Toyota sold just 107,000 Tundras in the U.S. last year, while Ford sold 916,000 F-Series trucks. Although Nissan and Honda have joined Toyota in the truck market, heavy investment has made Detroit's pickups more competitive than its cars. And Detroit can still count on the stubborn-guy factor. "I'd consider driving a Chevy, but that'd be about...
...outlaw Montana that I moved to 15 years ago and that my Eastern friends had apprehensions about--many of them quickly dismissed once they visited and fired a few rounds from the target pistols I own or took a pickup down to a local bar with a poker table in its back room--is setting like the evening sun. Ragged former cow towns like Bozeman are turning into suburbanized high-tech meccas for Ph.D.s who like to go rafting and snowboarding. These immigrants have brought with them an exotic culture of dining spots that feature formal wine lists, bookstores that...
...declined from $1.22 in May of 1984 to $1.15 by last January. In response, companies curbed production. At least 18 American refineries closed last year. The cutbacks have reduced U.S. inventories of gasoline by 9%, to 222 million bbl., since December. The tight supply and a seasonal pickup in driving this spring helped push prices back up. Another factor contributing to higher prices was the expense that oil companies faced to meet a July 1 Government-imposed deadline for reducing the amount of lead in gasoline by more than...