BusinessWeek: Toyota Fights to Regain U.S. Traction

[cwerdna]

Toyota Fights to Regain U.S. Traction - BusinessWeek

[Midpack]

Good read thanks, I thought this was the most interesting:

It can take three to four years to bring a new product to market. Merrill Lynch recently issued a report that analyzes how fast auto companies replace old product with new, and the implications for U.S. market share over the next four years. Surprisingly, Toyota fell behind Hyundai, Honda, and Ford. Merrill projected that Toyota will gain only one market-share point in the next four years, compared with three points or more for the other three companies—despite its prediction that GM and Chrysler will jointly drop 11 points of market share in the next four years.

Toyota recently posted its first loss in 58 years and projects that it will record another for this fiscal year. Inaba expects that Toyota will return to profit in the fiscal year ending in 2011. But that's only if he can find some answers as to why more people aren't buying the Toyotas he has in showrooms today.