By John LeBlanc
Newsflash:
Toyota Canada isn’t going to sell as many cars this year as they did last. To be specific, sales last month for the combined
Toyota/Lexus brands were down 17.1 per cent from September 2009, in a Canadian new car market that’s up 7 per cent. At this rate—and there’s no reason for Toyota’s sales to rise between now and the end of the year—sales could end up around 175,000 for 2010, down from the just-over-200,000 in 2009, the automaker’s biggest drop since 1993.
Now, for sure, no doubt, Toyota’s massive mess of recalls, which will shortly celebrate its first anniversary, has dulled the Japanese automaker’s previous untarnished reputation for quality, encouraging new car buyers to migrate to other brands. And Toyota could also blame the Great Recession, which has really hurt small car sales (its
Yaris and
Corolla sales are in the toilet.) Or the fact the
Detroit Three are still making hay while the sun shines on pickups, a segment Toyota has had little success despite several attempts.
True. Sort of. Yeah. Uh-huh. Except how does Toyota Canada explain why
Kia,
Hyundai and
Volkswagen—brands that don’t sell pickups, but primarily small cars—are sporting double-digit increases over 2009? Toyota can blame the market. Or specific weak segments. Or it can just look at its Toyota, Lexus and new
Scion showrooms, filled with aging and yawn-inducing products. In this economy, "new" sells. New car buyers need a good reason to buy. And Toyota’s “new” car cupboard is pretty bare for 2011.
But isn’t Toyota introducing “more than a dozen new or significantly refreshed Toyota and Lexus models in the coming year” including a bunch of "new" Scions?
Yeah. If you cut and paste the Japanese automaker's press releases. Granted, the
2011 Sienna and
4Runner (which have been on sale since last spring) are “new” by my standards. But I wouldn’t call refreshes of its
Avalon (above),
Highlander,
IS, or
RAV4 anything but updates. Even among the new-to-Canada Scion models, only the
tC coupe is not stale. And you have to bleed Toyota Red to think those Scions (already coming into a struggling segment) aren't going to cannibalize Yaris/Corolla/Matrix sales.
What do you think?
Do you think Toyota’s sales woes can strictly be blamed on its recall crisis?
Or is Toyota’s lack of exciting new products more to blame?
[Source: Toyota Canada, DesRosiers Associates]
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By John LeBlanc
