March brings Toyota back to the car market: sales reportedly up 50%
The paradoxical truth of successfully moving forward is to have a short memory while remembering the lessons of the past. Toyota, the beleaguered Japanese auto giant, hopes to do just that as they attempt to recover from what was, frankly, a disastrous end to 2009 and beginning of 2010. The numbers don’t lie: since fall, Toyota has recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide, over 6 million in the U.S. As many as 52 deaths have been linked to crashes caused by accelerator and braking problems. Sales fell by over 9% in February. Perhaps apropos, a Toyota speeding out of control because of its “sudden unintended acceleration,” unable to stop because of a sticking brake pedal, could serve as both a literal and metaphorical summation of Toyota’s problems over the past few months.
But the folks over at Toyota are nothing if not savvy—you don’t ascend to the automaking elite if you’re not—and in March they broke with prior practices and announced they would be offering incentives to help bring the buyers back to the heart of their business, the Chicago and Memphis showrooms, the Richmond and Newark used Toyota dealer. They said there would be zero percent financing and subsidized leases on many of their popular vehicles, and free maintenance for up to two years for all customers, heady moves and all extremely enticing for a public still reeling from an underperforming economy now going on several years and looking for relief when it comes to purchases.
So far these incentives seem to be working, if the numbers coming out of the Chicago and Memphis showrooms, off the New York, Reno, Cleveland, and Newark New Toyota Dealer lots are accurate: North American sales in the beginning of March were reportedly up 50% from the previous March, a broad jump that could more than compensate for the poor sales figures from January and February, the months central to Toyota’s plight thanks to Toyota executives appearing and testifying before Congress, when bad news was the only news. Even if sales figures were to level out to 30% by the end of March, as the excitement created by the incentive boost trails off as some are predicting, this would still be a major victory for Toyota.
But one particular pitfall to this rescue mission noted by some industry experts is the sustainability of the incentives (they have recently announced they will continue most of them through April) and what Toyota will do when they can no longer afford to offer them. A delicate question for sure and one that is on the mind of the Newark New Toyota Dealer and dealers all over the country, but Toyota’s response to the initial flood was apparently dynamic enough to seal the holes and it’s hard not to believe that the brain trust doesn’t already have a plan in place that is mindful of the past yet looking toward the future.
