eric@megageek.com wrote:
> No surprise there. I have found that Toyota has been scummy in just about
> every portion of business. Just look at their commercials, you'll see
> they are targeting the people that know the LEAST amount about cars.
>
>
But, that's true of most auto advertising these days. Whole lotta
people driving around in massive SUVs because of commercials, rather
than what they know about them....
But, I suspect there have been changes in Toyota management in the
nearly three decades since I worked in a Toyota dealership (the
dealership itself was pit of vipers, but the parent company was fairly
straight-up then). Here's an example of the way it used to be: I
happened to get an `83 Supra (about fifteen months after they were
introduced in this country) under warranty with what I could tell, the
moment I opened the hood, was a broken valve spring. I dutifully pulled
the spring and went to parts to get another. None to be found. So, we
called the national parts center at Long Beach to send us one by air.
None there, either. So, Long Beach called Toyota in Japan and said,
"send us one." About an hour later, the shop mamager tells me to
package up the parts in a particular way for shipment to Japan. What's
up?, I ask. He says, dunno, but the engineers there want to look at the
pieces.
Turned out that there were no parts in the system because Toyota only
stocked parts that had a repair history, and they'd never broken a valve
spring on the engine in the US since introduction of that engine, and
hadn't broken one in the four years that the engine had been in use in
Japan before being introduced here (that was standard practice then, to
keep new models out of the US until all the major bugs were found).
That's why the engineers were going berserker over a failure and wanted
the part right away and handled in a particular way.
There were other indications that Toyota was on top of things. When the
stockers at the factory accidentally put 22R gas engine rods in the
diesel equivalent, they were on it in less than 800 serial numbers, and
we got every one of them in our sales district into the shop before a
wholesale failure. Only one had even bent a rod. There are numerous
other examples of Toyota giving quality top priority while I was in that
shop. And, this was at a time when our counterparts at the
Cadillac-Olds-Buick-GMC dealer across the street were averaging twelve
hours flat-rate a week because they either couldn't get parts, or
couldn't get enough info from the factory to fix the problems they
encountered, and their back lot was crammed with cars waiting for repairs.
So, I suspect things have changed.
Cheers.
--
Michael Porter
Roswell, NM
Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....
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