kaBOOMn
Well-Known Member
Toyota threw open the doors of the hi-tech design studio behind its most important forthcoming car ? the crucial Corolla-replacement Auris ? underlying its ambition to makes cars that are stylish and good-looking as well as reliable and environmentally-conscious.
http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/secret_new_ca...=228&page=1
I see its not a bad looker, and lets face facts the Corolla has a image problem. Its plain, boreing and you can get a Korean car with the same attributes for less money, so why buy a Corolla?
I ran accross this quote on another website (The Telegraph.co.uk)....very interesting....
What really scares European car makers is the reliability and quality of the Korean vehicles and the wage-cost benefits of their factories. It's the sort of attack from below that really concerns non-premium manufacturers such as Renault, Peugeot-Citro?n, Ford and Vauxhall/Opel (although the GM brand has Korean-built Chevrolets to ease the pain), but most of all Japanese marques such as Honda, Mazda and, particularly, Toyota. The Corolla survived for years on its dull and bomb-proof image, but now the Koreans have parked their tanks on Toyota's lawn and its response, the Auris (Motoring, January 27), doesn't seem to have all the answers.
In turn, the Koreans are terrified of the Chinese, who are likely to come along within five years and steal all their clothes. And little fleas have bigger fleas upon their backs to bite 'em and bigger fleas have greater fleas, and so on, ad infinitum.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml=/motoring/2007/03/10/nosplit/mfhyu10.xml
Hrm, so I do question the logic of Toyota trying to move upmarket, maybe they should undercut all the Koreans and kill them off? I mean sort of like Microsoft releaseing Win2k opensourse would kill Linux off (except for a few "hardcore" geeks) Toyota should have the money saved away or will we see them go the way of GM/Ford etc?