Word: toyotas
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...exact car I wanted, I paid sticker price. I don't believe you ever pay full sticker price for an American car." As she and Heather head out for an evening of comparison shopping, Julie expects the domestic dealers to be more flexible on price than Toyota...
Final stop is Continental Toyota, where a slick, streamlined Celica has been waiting to capture Heather's heart. She jumps into a white $14,600 hardtop and opens the sun roof, declaring, "This is so cute!" The floor model has a stick shift; instantly Heather insists, "I could learn manual shifting." She would drive it out the door right now if she could. Julie says, "I don't think there's even a comparison" with the Calais or the Sunbird...
Before Heather takes a Celica for a test spin, her mother confides, "She would give her eyeteeth for this car." Afterward Toyota salesman Richard Misheikis tells mother and daughter that "there's not too much flexibility" in the $14,638 price. Figuring just a $6,000 trade-in allowance plus some options, the cost works...
...week's end Drew was still mulling his choice. But it was already clear Toyota had won the loyalties of another young American driver...
Detroit's troubles are far from new, and they're remarkably tenacious. Despite a decade of cost slashing and a $110 billion drive to upgrade factories, U.S. carmakers keep losing ground to such relentless powerhouses as Honda and Toyota. Japanese-based automakers roared from a 12% share of the U.S. car market in 1979 to 25% in this year's first quarter. And while the recession has clobbered many Japanese firms too, their U.S sales fell only 11% in the first quarter, vs. a whopping 21% decline for American companies. And the gap is growing: Japanese makers last week reported...