[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

All of the above is very accurate. Conditions just arrived a lot faster than anyone could have imagined. Just by being a player in the BOF segment every member is getting hurt. Those that weren't players such as Honda gave up HUGE profits over the last 15 years. Those that weren't players such as Honda aren't stuck with lot anchors in the short term.

To read anything more than this being a shortterm serendipitous situation for HOnda and Hyundai and Mazda is reading far too much into it.

As you correctly said, if it happened 18 mo's later GM and Ford would be fairly well along in a new direction. This just sped up the changes that were started in 2001 and since. Case in point, the lambda's and the Edge are well positioned and fully market-ready to catch all the defectors from the Tahoe/Yukon/TrailBlazer/Envoy and from the Expedition/Explorer respectively. Both companies saw what was occuring. It was all over the monthly sales stats since 2003. Their midsizers are just as good if not better than everyone else's. The only glaring gap is in the compact segment where both entries are mediocre. They haven't been able to bring these up to competitive levels across the board....and make a profit from them.

For Toyota its a minor inconvenience in the long term. Fast forward 2 years and one of its three BOF plants may be converted to some kind of unibody vehicle plant. It's a temporary hiccup for a company with no debt.

WOW..this happened a lot quicker than I expected....

Announced today..http://pressroom.toyota.com/Releases...T2008071034962 ( susbject of another thread in the news articles forum as well )