Avis and Enterprise Stop Leasing Toyotas, Hertz Yet to Make Decision, moving cars, car hauler

The major car rental companies will be moving cars with Toyota decals to the back of the lot, as both Avis Budget and Enterprise are opting to not rent out the Toyotas currently under recall. The peddle problems generally don’t manifest themselves in the low-mileage cars in the rental fleets, but the rental car companies don’t want to be seen leasing flawed cars.

Fleet sales to rental car companies are large parts of car company’s sales. They are also good marketing tools, as people might go on to buy a car they drove as a rental; I recall giving the PT Cruiser a serious look after driving one as a rental car. Having the major rental car companies pull most of their Toyotas will mean that customers won’t get that experience.

If the affected Toyotas get a bad reputation and people prefer not driving them, the fleet cars could be retired early. That would lead to some premature car hauler business taking the old Toyotas in the rental car fleet to auctions or used car lots and bringing replacement cars in.

On the bright side, this might loosen up a tight used car market. The Cash for Clunkers program took a lot of old cars off the market, but there might be a new set of “clunkers” heading into used car lots to offset their loss. I put “clunker” in quotes, for the cars should be just fine once the accelerator issue is fixed, but they may well have a bad reputation if the press of this week is any indication.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...ustryCollection

Toyota to Close NUMMI, Teamsters, UAW Protest Job Losses, car transport, car hauling

The NUMMI plant in California, a joint venture between Toyota and GM, seems to be on its last legs, much to the chagrin of Teamster car haulers. GM has abandoned its share of the plant during bankruptcy and Toyota is about to do likewise; the Corolla produced there is part of the recall that has set Toyota on its heels. Toyota is planning to shift production of the Tacoma pickup to San Antonio and move Corolla production to Canada and Japan.

That might please the Canadian Auto Workers, but the UAW doesn’t like it; the move has set up a tag-team protest of the NUMMI closure between the Teamsters, the UAW and the environmental group Friends of the Earth, who are going to exchange unpleasantries at the Japanese embassy in Washington on Thursday. Protesting in front of Toyota HQ might be more effective, but doing so in Washington in front of the Washington press corps makes for better PR; the Teamsters protested Chrysler’s apparent lack of interest in unionized car transport in front of the Italian embassy last year, playing up Chrysler’s Fiat connection.

The move should cost some Teamster car hauling jobs, as the Japanese imports are more likely to move by rail than the NUMMI-made cars. The environmental angle here is that moving the cars by sea from Japan will leave a greater carbon footprint.

However, NUMMI’s time has come and gone. When it got started in 1984, it was a way for GM to learn Toyota’s quality-control tricks and for Toyota to get pointers from GM on how to manufacture in the US. A quarter-century on, and Six Sigma black belts abound in US manufacturing; we’ve gotten the quality control bug and Toyota has gone native, as the Lexington high school football highlights from Toyota Stadium in Georgetown point out.

Source: http://www.joc.com/node/416309