Battered by expensive crises, Toyota declares a rebirth
“Reborn”, read a logo beamed onto a large screen.
“My initial reaction was: ‘You’re kidding! Please, not pink’, “ Akio Toyoda, the Toyota chief executive and a scion of the Japanese automaker’s founding family, said. “But being reborn does mean taking on new challenges.”
Toyota has spent much of the last year trying to leave behind what has been a tumultuous four years in which the automaker booked its largest loss ever, became embroiled in a recall scandal, struggled with a decimated supply chain after the 2011 tsunami and weathered the punishing effects of a strong yen.
One by one, the pieces have been falling into place.
In 2012, Toyota leapfrogged General Motors and Volkswagen to regain its title as the world’s largest automaker, selling 9.7 million vehicles, a record for the company. Now the company is on the cusp of a recovery, analysts say, that could put it on track to post the kind of growth promised before the crises.
“Toyota is now in the position — for the first time in years — where it is beating market expectations while its peers are disappointing,” Clive Wiggins, a Tokyo-based autos analyst for Macquarie, said in a
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