Thursday, April 02, 2009

GM’s failure evokes fear of “the 80s Japan bashing” among Toyota executives

Till now, GM has been the major competitor of Toyota Motors in USA. Now that GM is in bad shape, Toyota should be happy but Toyota executives are afraid that the failure of GM, Chrysler and Ford would rejuvenate Japan bashing that took place in the 80s. Today, Toyota officials said that they wish GM to recover from its losses.

Poor consumer expenditure hurt American auto industry. Yasushiko Ichihashi, Senior Managing Director, Toyota Motor Corporation said that his company does not see GM’s failure as an opportunity. He wished American market would return to health soon. Toyota hopes for an overall recovery of the US auto-market. US automarket is the biggest market of Toyota Motor Corporation. If GM fails today, Toyota might fail tomorrow. Because of the economic recession in USA, Toyota Motor posted its first annual loss since 1950 in the current fiscal year. In March, the condition of auto sales improved a bit. Americans bought 857,735 vehicles in Mach, a 25% rise compared to February. Ichihashi said that the number shows that there is still hope for recovery.

Related articles:

Bloomberg

AP

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