Word: trucks
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...loss of nearly $850 million. Highly profitable, full-size SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe risked looking like beached whales as record gas prices crimp sales and consumers shift to smaller models and hybrids made by rivals. (Until recently, GM dismissed passenger-car hybrids as a lousy business, though light-truck hybrids are in the works for 2007.) GM's credit rating teeters a notch above junk, and rumors of a bankruptcy filing, which GM officials persistently deny, sent its stock sliding to a 12-year-low closing price last week...
...would move overseas and practically live in a new plant for a few years. Classroom training is now the rule. And for the first time, Toyota's U.S. plants--not factories in Japan--are acting as the "mother ships" for new factories. A Georgetown, Ky., plant shepherded a new truck plant in Mexico, and one in Indiana is taking charge of training for the San Antonio plant. Seizo Okamoto, president of the Indiana plant, candidly calls the added responsibility "a strain on resources...
Indeed, for all Toyota's strengths, the company needs a truck hit in the U.S. to offset weaker prospects in other areas. While Toyota is expanding rapidly in Europe and China, those sales tend to be concentrated in the compact-car segment, in which profit margins are low. In Japan, where Toyota intends to launch its Lexus brand in August, the company may have a hard time expanding market share, already at 44%. The dollar's slump against the yen, meanwhile, makes Japanese exports more expensive...
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...
...promoting itself as an all-American brand. The last thing Toyota needs is a revival of protectionist consumer sentiment. Recent ads tout the number of U.S. jobs Toyota has created. The company also became the first foreign automaker to crack NASCAR, entering the Tundra last year in the Craftsman Truck Series, and as a NASCAR sponsor Toyota is beginning to get notice from fans. "Being a Chevy man all my life, I'm starting to look at the Toyotas coming out," said Jared Branan, 24, of Kissimmee, Fla., attending a race in Daytona Beach last January. "They're starting...