GM vs. Toyota: The canoe race

Jeff Independence,first of all I don’t believe you worked in engineerig for both GM and toyota. Your comments don’t seem as if there were from someone educated. Also, if you did work for both plants why did you leave???? I think you are telling tall tales, buy a GM product and the proof in obvious. GM is a quality built product, built by people like me that take pride in their work. It is interesting that you can tell so much by walking through a factory, and forming such a negative opinion of people. Get real, face it buddy you are just another bitter person that is not happy in their current job???

Simply put, American businesses are among the most short sighted in the world. They want instant profits next quarter and are unwilling to make long term investments that will lower short term profits. Toyota and Honda are reaping the benefits right now of investing in fuel efficient cars even when gas was below $2 in the 1990s. The Detroit Big 3 just rolled in the profits from trucks and SUVs and are rightly suffering.

Remember this October 2007 Business week article?
“It’s been a rough week for Toyota. First, the company gets slapped by Consumer Reports, which said that Toyota’s quality slipped so much that it will no longer recommend every car just because it has a loopy “T” on the hood. CR won’t recommend the V-6 powered Toyota Camry sedan nor the Tundra pickup because their quality results were below average. Overall, Toyota slipped in CR’s latest survey. Its namesake brand now ranks fifth, behind Honda, Acura, Scion and Subaru. The next day, Toyota said it would recall 470,000 cars in Japan.”

All of this was followed by an apology by President Katsuaki Watanabe where he vowed that Toyota would do better. Not so easy to keep quality up when you are producing large volumes, is it?

At the same time, GM and Ford made huge quality strides. American’s need to stop talking about the past and evaluate things in today’s environment. The gap in quality has closed and it would be great to stop sending all of the automotive profits to Japan.

Read the news- nothing is the same as it was.

I have also worked in engineering for both GM and Toyota. The difference between the two is night and day. After working in a GM plant I have no idea how they have stayed in business this long. The workers have no pride in their work and take their cushy union jobs for granted. The workers in Toyota plants are fiercely proud of their work and will go above and beyond what is expected of them to build a quality car.

It is true that the Big 3 has long ignored the consumers, but it is also true that GM has taken some great steps in improving quality and customer relations. I grew up in Detroit, my dad worked for GM for 31 years and was on the ground floor for the development and launch of Saturn. I spent much of my time in the mock up room at the GM Tech center, and those engineers were working non stop to develope a good solid car. As one comment mentioned anyone at a Toyota plant can shut down the line, so can Saturn employees. Those people were hand picked to relocate to Spring Hill TN. to build those cars. My opinion is that they succeded, the problem is critcs are too busy slamming the Big 3 and cozying up to imports. I recently bought a new car for my family and we looked at everything. Honda,Toyota,Ford,Chrysler and the like. We settled on a Saturn Aura because it was the best car available, PERIOD. it was quieter, more responsive, feature rich(for my price range), and above all the customer service topped ALL of the import show rooms we visited. I have had my fair share of new cars, domestic and imports. It has been my experince that they all produce rolling scrap metal sooner or later, and they have all had their fair share of recalls. People however are stuck on the mid late 80’s stigma of domestic is junk and imports rule, and that has been the hardest part for the Big 3, over come a stint of poor design and quality. For the most part they did it with trucks and SUVs. look at Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, they tried very hard to break into the full size truck market with the Tundra, Titan, and Ridgeline.
The Big 3 does often row very hard in the wrong direction, but when they row in the right direction, they do it well. look at Ford with the Explorer, they reinvented the station wagon and were very successful.
In closing, I think all car manufactures have their ups and downs, sooner or later imports will have there downs too.

Quite simply, the Country lacks Ownership. The biggest problem we have created for ourselves as a Society in the United States is the ability to have someone else carry the responsibility, reputation, or even consequences of our actions. Whether it be having a credit card company finance the new HD TV and surround sound system or financing a $500,000 home when your household income is less than 20% of that annually. We (US) are notorious for clawing at any relevant morsel of innocence until the very end. Eventually we acknowledge what our actions were and ask for forgiveness. This would be where the lesson part would come in; however, we elimenate by finding reason and accountability in something from our upbringing or environment that caused us damage and “could be” the driver to said action. From our President smiling while pocketting any real and profound situations within our Country and blaming the War on Terrorism for most of our problems to CEOs taking advantage of hundreds of thousands of employees and customers at Countrywide; we have made this behavior acceptable in our Country. Our President created the financial obligations externally and now we have financial problems internally. Grow up George, you made a lot of bad decisions. Countrywide’s CEO commented that he could not be held accountable as a private investor for seeing an opportunity to retire earlier than planned.

Both of these individuals will be on golf courses five years from today (Mizzulo and Busch) and be laughing and enjoying life. Unfortunately, the families, lives, and organizations that these two men managed to destroy, deplete, demoralize, send to their death, or cause the death of; will never be able to make amends with what was lost.

Please ensure your Vote is about what you want for your Country. The last time I checked, the color of skin, sex, nor family determined who made a good or bad President. In most cases, it came down to how they responded to situations while they were president.

From the 1970’s forward people more and more are looking for reliability, dependability and good gas milage. Toyota has filled that niche and has always listened what the consumer wanted. On the flip side, GM, Ford & Chrysler have not. The writing was on the wall years ago but the Big 3 chose not to listen. Gone are the days when the philosophy was ” Just build it and they will buy it”. Having worked for Toyota and GM both, I’ve seen so much more problems with the GM vehicles from the very start. It not that the Big 3 can’t build a vehicle just as good or better, it is the fact that the Big 3 chooses not to. Tour a vehicle manufacturing plant if you get a chance. You will see higher quality control at Toyota than GM. At Toyota, anybody can stop the assembly line if they spot a problem. At GM only top management can stop the line. Toyota’s Georgetown, KY plant is the most efficient auto manufacturing plant in the world. Toyota has sent letters and on 1 occasion even called to ask me what I liked, didn’t like or would like to see improved or added to my Toyota. Toyota will ask American parts suppliers to build a part to Toyota,s exact specification. If they do not meet that specification then they will buy from another supplier. Thus cheapest is not always the best.In closing, GM just build a car you can be proud of. Think dependability & reliability.

The proverbial canoe race is an a fairly example of the difference between Japanese and Amercan automakers but I have seen many examples of steering in the same direction at domestics.
The larger scale problem is that the domestics have not been very good at solving lingering real problems like labor contracts or weaning off incenties to falsely prop up sales (GM). GM’s sales should have begun a more preciptious decline years ago, but the company choose instead of create a car bubble by teasing and luring customers back for new SUVs and trucks they did not need time and time again.
Still, they lost money.
Now, the economy has turned really bad and the auto bubble has burst and the SUV and truck market completley imploded. Japenese automakers, the so-called rowers, are suffereing just as the American autormakers, the ones preoccupied with steering, are suffering.
The biggest difference is not that one has been rowing better than the other, but that one had a better idea of what direction to go in than that other.
That, simply, is the difference. Had GM backed off incentives, dealt with its larger scale problems more aggresively, etc….ths downturn would be taking a toll…but it would not be spiraling the company toward bankruptcy.
In my recent book How Toyota Became #1 (Portfolio/Penguin), I got deeply inside Toyota looking for secrets to the company’s success. This company has issues of too many steering coaches too, but, for the most part, they know what direction they want to go in. That is how they keep plodding along, not losing money in a quarter for 50 years. That is why they will emerge unscathed but with a few years of lower earnings from this debacle. And that is why GM, which has unfortunately paddled very hard in some wrong directions in recent years just to buy more time, will suffer greatly for years to come.