Toyota Unveils Its New 2011 Avalon…Like You Care!?!?!

The new 2011 Toyota Avalon

Toyota executives can’t be feeling happy these days. In the midst of shut-down production lines and global recalls for all of its best-selling vehicles, as well as cries from media sources that action was a direct result of US regulatory arm-twisting, there has been little good news.

Until today, when it unveiled its savior at the Chicago Auto Show: the 2011 Avalon.

Scratch that — the company is still screwed.

Since 2005 the Avalon has been the best Buick sold in America. Aside from the nasty (actually, downright dangerous) five-speed automatic transmissions in the 2005-2007 models, the Avalon has been a way to get pseudo-luxury in a $30,000ish package. Given its size and ammenities, the Avalon has really competed against much more expensive players in the large sedan segment: Mercedes, Audi, Jaguar, BMW, and even Lexus. I even dropped my own personal sheckles on a 2006 Avalon Limited for daily transport and have been generally pleased.

Times change, though. What looked, felt and performed great five years ago, however, doesn’t necessarily cut it in 2010. With this, Toyota had to freshen the Avalon’s face.

Despite the long press release (laced with more buzz-words and flowery language than Las Vegas technical trade show presentation), there’s really nothing new or noteworthy about the upcoming Avalon. For 2011 the multitude of exterior changes (new lamp clusters, wheels and changes to the bodywork) are so subtle that even one of those fanatical Porsche fans who can point out the thousand differences in two seemingly identical-looking 911s would consider the new and outgoing Avalons identical… and then go on with his day without a second thought.

The interior gets easy-to-spot changes, but not really many improvements, such as replacing some cheap-looking faux aluminum trim with not-fooling-anyone faux wood trim. There’s still no massaging or multiple lumbar support seats option, as found on other more expensive players.

The 2011 Avalon finally gets the options of a rear backup camera and a touch-screen navigation system with real-time traffic (which replaces the absolutely unusable button-type on current gen cars.) Both are commonplace in entry-level luxury vehicles these days.

So at the end of the day, the unveiling is a lot of motion for a little move…or to quote The Who: “meet the new boss — the same as the old boss”. As GM and Ford found out, if you don’t watch quality and fail to deliver fresh, stylish cars that have features competitors don’t, time at the top is short lived.

And that’s what Hyundai is banking on!

Toyota’s Newest Television Ad

I caught Toyota’s new mea culpa television advertisement this morning. Evidently, it has been running on such high-rotation that people are starting to think it’s the video for the latest Beyonce song.

The advertisement is such a boilerplate corporate job that it almost looks like a Saturday Night Live parody. It starts out with black and white photos from the earliest Hollywood Toyota dealership. Quickly it moves to shots of good old red-blooded Americans building Toyotas in the factory.

Since video is nothing without audio, there’s the requisite soothing piano to calm the scared and frustrated nerves of the customer. Then the ace-in-the-hole: the smooth-voiced narrator pulls out the “we’ve let you down…we’ve let ourselves down”. All we’re missing here is the crying Native American chief for pure cheese-effect.

As an automotive journalist who witnessed his first television advertisement copy (for the local Diabetes Bike-A-Thon) aired while in fourth grade, I give the Toyota spot a solid C-minus. It lacks creativity, context, and looks and sounds like a big corporation that is sorry for getting caught.

Instead of the bogus mea culpa, Toyota would have been much better-off doing a quick explanation of its problems. Just off-hand (really– just stream of consciousness), I’d think about something also along the lines of “there are thousands of parts and hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code that go into making any modern car run. Every model from all makes has parts fail, resulting in technical service bulletins and even recalls. However, at Toyota we’re known and have staked our reputation on being better than the rest. Recently we’ve discovered that a couple of parts and a few software commands were not created to the standard we require, so we’ve engineered fixes and along with our factory-supported dealerships, we’re going to get them into every Toyota…quickly, safely and with no excuses.”

I would also add somewhere that “this is not the fault of the hard-working men and women on the production lines.” After all, the failures have been in the engineering of the parts and software, not how they were assembled.

At the end of the day, it’s a hard line to walk for a company. It needs to admit fault and ask forgiveness, but it also can’t scare people into thinking that this a more dangerous, more widespread problem than it really is. Of course, when a company shuts down its production lines, halts sales of many of its vehicles and has the nightly news programs talking about stuck throttles and no brakes, there’s really little way of making it sound any worse…

…unless your apology sounds like parody.

Toyota’s Uphill Battle — With Stuck Throttle And No Brakes

In the last week or so it seems I get more questions about Toyota from readers than I do requests for sweets from my children. Whether it’s about the sticking accelerator recall, the Prius braking issue, the five-speed automatic transmission software maladies, or the effect of all these on Toyota’s long-term health, there is no lack of interest out there in getting good answers.

There are two big factors at play that the evening news and even automotive magazines don’t want to talk about (and, of course, I will). The first has something to do with the demographics and psychographics of Toyota and Lexus buyers — they aren’t, on average, “car people”. Indeed, I’ve long referred to Toyotas and Lexus vehicles as “cars for people who don’t like cars”. Obviously this is a gross generalization, as I’m a die-hard car guy and when I’m not piloting something stupid like a Corvette, Ferrari, Triumph, or old truck, I’m driving my kids to school in an ’06 Avalon. The prime market for Toyota, however, has been people not looking for a vehicle for fun or to fulfill an ego need, but rather as a safe, reliable, ergonomic appliance to get them reliably and economically from point A to point B.

Consequently, Toyota and Lexus owners generally don’t have a good understanding of automotive technology and/or history from which to draw conclusions regarding the current issues. While the Toyota (and especially Lexus) ownership group compares well to competitors’ in terms of academic and professional success, these are not people who are going to research issues within context of the industry. They just want to know a) if there is a problem that affects them, b) if it does when it can be fixed, and c) if the car is safe to drive until said solution can be implemented. If any part of the explanation isn’t clear…which it has not been, then the problem is compounded.

This is just half of Toyota’s dire big picture situation, though.

The other factor is that Toyota and Lexus have reached leadership positions in their respective classes based almost entirely on the image of quality. People haven’t been buying Camrys, Siennnas, ES350s, or Highlanders for their speed, luxury, handling, or sex appeal. Hell, even the Lexus LS series has been developed as a reliable, lower-cost alternative to Mercedes S-Class (with derivative styling, to boot).

So in the absence of this core value proposition, consumers have no reason to buy a Toyota or Lexus.

Talking heads have put blame all over the place — from design failure on the part of the OEM pedal supplier to an internal management structure overwhelmed by far too rapid market growth. Based on my traditional business education and years in management, I’d call these knee-jerk catch-all diagnoses (like “spastic colon” or “irritable bowel”) rather than meaningful analysis of strategic and tactical failures.

There are tremendous challenges for Toyota going forward. First, they have to identify what is actually causing all of the accelerator and braking issues in its cars, then they have to figure out how to actually fix millions of cars quickly.

Next they have to identify the source of the product management issues that led to the failures. In modern times quality is defined as the failure rate engineered into any given component, because while it is possible to make anything fail-safe, the cost to do so is unreasonable from a business case standpoint. That said, an analysis needs to be done for each failure of how the culprit system was engineered and if the malfunction can find a causal or associative relationship with a specific benefit like increased profit, better mpg, use of a preferred business supplier.

Most importantly, Toyota has to fix the self-inflicted damage done to its reputation…and it better start really quickly. Obviously this begins with solving these issues in all of its vehicles, but it also needs to include the shortcomings in its problem-reporting process, which according to Toyota Media Manager Bill Kwong completely and entirely disregards third-party collected information, even if it is a consumer complaint site with thousands of confirmed, actionable reports. Toyota will only consider and act on information reported from dealers via district managers and from the miniscule percentage of owners who use the toll-free Toyota Customer Service hotline.

Finally, what nobody else has brought up (so allow me to do so), is that Toyota must then move beyond marketing one-trick ponies. One can’t sell only on the basis of quality if quality is in doubt. As for the two cars in Toyota’s lineup that aren’t marketed based on quality alone, the Corolla and Prius: I have two words: Chevy Volt. You can’t sell only on gas mileage once these models look like Bugatti Veyrons at wide-open-throttle compared to the Chevy Volt’s 200-mpg.

At the end of the day, the moment the US Secretary of Transportation went on record saying Toyota, with its perceived primary value proposition of quality, not only now suffers severe safety issues across the majority of its product offerings, but also systematically worked to hide the problem from regulators and avoid recalls…well, this is a disaster of Andy Dick at Mardi Gras proportions. Excuses and blocking the truth is something Americans expect from Ford (Pinto and Mustang gas tanks, Explorer rollover issues, fire-starting cruise controls, Crown Vicky stuck accelerators) and GM (side-saddle gas tanks, bad steering and motor mounts in the early 1970s), but not from Toyota.

Actually, it isn’t a disaster for everyone. Ford and GM sales are up. And come to think of it, Audi has to be happy that “unintended acceleration” will no longer be associated only with its brand.

And just like Audi, Toyota can expect to spend millions of dollars and decades of time to repair the damage to its reputation. Might we suggest taking a page from Audi’s book and engineer in performance, design, ergonomics, image, luxury…and also quality. If there’s one thing that Land Rover and Fiat have proven time and time again, people will buy the least reliable vehicles on the market, provided said vehicle offers more to the driver than the perceived or actual quality of its parts.