Toyota stock took a hit this year, but I didn't sell and it is already recovering. They have better fundamentals in place than any other manufacturer. Good quality, reasonable price, low maintenance.
It is amazing it is over 40 years since the quality revolution in the '70s and we have still not caught up to the Japanese. It really makes me wonder......???
When I was in Italy back in 2001, I was on a ferry from Naples to Palermo when I had a chance to talk to a woman who owned an assembly-line trouble-shooting company started by her father, and she said what Toyota does is to take their product and tweek it a bit here, and then tweek it a bit there next year, ...
One of the big problems with the American-owned companies is the pattern for wholesale change, which was they did extensively year-to-year back when the controlled the market here. As a kid, I remember running to the dealerships in the fall to see what the new cars looked like, and we did this year after year. However, when much is changed, much can go wrong.
Another factor is cultural, namely that the Japanese feel strongly that the company is theirs, whereas Americans tend to feel that the company is a place to work and that's it. Buddhism teaches that "when doing the dishes, there's nothing more important than doing the dishes", whereas the average American just wants to get the job done as we tend to be an impatient people.
Obviously the above is somewhat of a stereotype, but certainly not entirely so. American cars have improved significantly as Consumer's Reports has written, but we still haven't caught up.
BTW, I own a 2004 Mazda 6 that was assembled in Flat Rock, Michigan, and I got it because is was American assembled, had more American parts than most domestically-owned cars, plus I got the Ford discount. I have over 130,000 miles on it and have not had a single mechanical repair yet, knock-on-wood [hits own head three times].
