As the February 2010 sales figures have rolled out, a number of sources noted that Toyota is responding to its plummet in the figures with incentives and 0% financing. While this seems like a sure-fire way to boost their sales in the short term, it also makes Toyota sound more and more like the General Motors of the 1970s and 80s.
Consider this: Over the past decade Toyota has gone against longstanding traditional mores governing parent company/parts supplier relationships by putting the screws to their suppliers even in the best of times in order to milk the most profit out of each part. In addition to abusing their suppliers, Toyota has put international growth above all else (even by their own admission).
It doesn't take a historian to see the General Motors-esque pattern developing here. ("Profit Above All Else -> Short Term Thinking -> Negative Results from Short Term Thinking (unreliability) -> More Short Term Thinking (lobbying to avoid repair costs rather than simply recalling the product and fixing future models) -> More Negative Results (increasing numbers of complaints and/or deaths) -> More Short Term Thinking (hastily executed recall that may not have even solved the problem entirely) -> Product Devaluation -> More Short Thinking (incentives) -> Further Product Devaluation) Heck, GM got it down to a science in the 1970s and 80s, right before they were forced to pay the price.
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