Re: Another massive Takata recall looms for large batch of airbags Quote:
Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain I firmly believe that the impression of Japanese = defect free is perhaps their single biggest marketing success. Sure, Toyota's and Honda's vehicles in the 70s were more reliable than their American counterparts, but that was that. They have cashed in on this for decades. The world has since moved on, and others have made giant strides. As the Koreans have already demonstrated and as the Chinese are now showing, reliability is not the monopoly of the Japanese alone and it doesn't have to cost a premium either. This is not specific to automobiles but a broad generalization of overall manufacturing. |
Agree with you, they have been followers off late (rather for 2 decades), playing safe (barring Mazda IMO) just adding precision engineering to market driven products.
Obviously they are spending heavily on marketing & (covert) advertising to ensure public is always under impression that Japanese are still the best. They are constantly beaten by Porsche, VW & Koreans in quality game in North America & Europe.
They were leaders in fuel-cell research but have squandered lead to Germans & Koreans. They don't have good diesel engines either & those from GM & Hyundai are far better, & I'm not comparing with the Germans. All know what best Honda could manage with VW copied diesel.
They are borrowing engines from Germans to make some noise, making cars that rev hard, but not burning the tarmac with 0-100 numbers or top speed. Forget the turbo charging that's i'm sure they will be the last to adopt to in commercial sense/ numbers.
Then biggest quality issue these days is infotainment system, & biggest auto major is slow to get Andriod Auto & Apple Carplay on their vehicles that are sold at price of Uber-Premium brands in India. I'd rather buy the base mode of Hexa (400 Nm torque one) over Innova Crysta & spend some money on bigger tyres, infotainment system & few necessities still save few lakhs at time of buying. Please show me a diesel vehicle that fetches millions in NCR after 10 years.
Cut short their cars are not special enough as compared to those 40 years ago & they are outclassed by Germans, Americans, Koreans & now Chinese. I'm sure if M&M & Tata can manage tweak their production processes, the Japs will be selling to fleet only.
Coming to business model, Japanese model is lending money & getting favours (tax concessions, exemptions, etc.) from governments for Japanese businesses who make fat money, unlike Chinese who are into outright acquisition (neo-imperialistic, refer CPEC & Silk Route). |