The World Car
A bland car highlights the trouble with short-term thinking
I have one in my driveway. It’s grey, scratched and has a damaged front end from a misadventure with a truck. The inside looks like a taxi, with roomy yet bland interior. It’s solid and has never once let me down. I’m talking of course about the Toyota Camry, the most popular sedan in the world and one of the most favored vehicles ever to be produced since the first one rolled off the assembly line in 1982.
The only thing I do for the Camry is change the oil and the belts and occasionally the tires. That is it. While others who drive more exciting vehicles from Ford or Nissan, my Camry trudges along confidently, with a bit of a clinical detachment from the road. It’s not the kind of car that excites Road and Track, but if you look around while driving about this world, you will surely see dozens of the four-door conveyances.
I enjoy watching horror movies with my wife. If we were being chased by an axe murderer or a ferocious dinosaur, forget the Jeep, I want our Camry.
I asked the question on Quora once about why American automakers can’t match the steadfast reliability of the Camry, which is known to exceed 200,000 miles on a regular basis. The answers were interesting and my research elsewhere supports the contentions.
For starters, in Japan, many companies, including Toyota, care about long term reputation. They call it “Kaizen” which means continuous improvement. Toyota puts a laser focus on each part of the building and design process for it’s cars. Problems are found during production and anyone has the ability to stop the production line without being shunned. Issues are handled immediately. In America, there is great pressure to meet quotas and hit targets, lest the quarterly financial results be impacted. This has been the downfall of many great companies, including Sears, Ford in past decades and more. Everything can be sacrificed at the altar of quarterly results and executive bonuses.
Furthermore, there is a strong focus on reliability over innovation. Innovation is fun, just drive a BMW to experience that, but all that tech equals points of failure. The Camry is tried and true and may not excite, but she will keep you off the side of the highway,
Lastly, there is a collaborative spirit in Japan and Toyota. Management and employees work as a team to get the job done right. They are all in it together. While 40 year careers in Japan are less common than they used to be, the average worker at Toyota stays almost nine and a half years compared to just under four years for American workers. Union fights and other labor issues divide American workers from their bosses and it is quite likely that the product suffers as a result.
All over the globe you will find the Toyota Camry. Toyota considers it one of their two “World Cars” alongside the smaller Corolla sedan.
Soon I’ll fire up my 2011 Camry with 140,000 miles on it, and I’m certain it will take me wherever I need to go. I’m equally certain that unless American companies somehow break free from the quarterly result burden, they will not maintain the engineering heights they are capable of. How are things going over at Boeing these days? If my ticket says 737 Max, I might just decide to take another spin in our old beat up Camry again.
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