Tuesday, March 9, 2010

MY '73 TOYOTA

It was one of my first cars. I bought it used, probably around 1977. I have no recollection of from whom I bought it, or under what circumstances.

It was white…well, more like cream, especially when you considered the ground-in dirt all over it. And the interior was one piece of creaky plastic after another. Yet, it was sort of cool, in a not-too-long-out-of-college, see-my-still-unusual-car sort of way. It was Japanese. No one – including me – had any pretensions that this Toyota Corolla was a “good” car. That it was solid. Or that it would last. Toyota, in those days, was still a long way from that status. But this little car served its purpose. It would get me where I had to go. And it would do so without costing me an arm and a leg for gas.

I remembered, when I had bought it, the stories my fifth-grade teacher had told us about “Made in USA.” He had related the story that, in the depths of a thousand miles of rubble after World War II, Japan needed to devise a way to stimulate its destroyed economy. And the best way to do that was to develop a market for its products in America. So they built a new town, called it Usa, and began stamping everything – from cars to push-pins – with “Made in USA.” I never found out if it was really true. But, to us, it was a hell of a story.

In fact, in those days, you didn’t see a hell of a lot of Toyotas on the road. My Dad, a World War II veteran who landed at Normandy and was wounded in Germany, was less than thrilled at my purchase of a Japanese car. And my uncle, who had fought the Japanese all through the Pacific, and had come home from Iwo Jima with a captured Japanese rifle and bayonet, was even less thrilled.

Most Americans don’t even know that the Japanese eventually learned to make quality products – including cars – from an American businessman and industrialist named W. Edwards Deming. After the war, Deming had been asked by the American government to go to Japan and help re-build the Japanese manufacturing sector, by teaching them American production methods and operations systems. And Deming taught them so well that they eventually, of course, passed us in the production of highly-reliable and quality automobiles.

So – like anyone else who once drove a Toyota, and who has admired the product even after he never drove one again – I’m disappointed and disillusioned by the betrayal of the public trust by a once-great company. How quickly, these days, the mighty can fall. And, like many people, I’m willing to cut Toyota a bit of slack for the problems with their cars. But I’m not sure I can ever forgive the apparent deceptions and story-spinning by a once-beloved company that seems to have put profits above people.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
www.winstoncommunications.com
steve@winstoncommunications.com
(954) 575-4089