"mint Condition" Convertible Toyota Solara 2007 Warranty Included In Price on 2040-cars

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Jim Lentz exposes more details behind Toyota's move to Texas

Toyota's North American CEO Jim Lentz has already given us a rough idea of what prompted the company's surprise move to the Dallas suburb of Plano, TX from its longstanding headquarters in Torrance, CA. A new story from The Los Angeles Times, though, delivers even more detail from Lentz on the reasoning for the move, what other cities were considered and why the company's current host city wasn't even in the running.
Of course, one of the more popular reasons being bandied about includes the $40 million Texas was set to give the company for the move, as well as the state's generous tax rates. According to Lentz, though, the reason Toyota chose Plano over a group of finalists made up of Atlanta, Charlotte and Denver, was far simpler than that - it was about consolidating its marketing, sales, engineering and production teams in a region that's closer to the company's seat of manufacturing in the south.
"It doesn't make sense to have oversight of manufacturing 2,000 miles away from where the cars were made," Lentz told The Times. "Geography is the reason not to have our headquarters in California."

Scion was slain by Toyota, not the Great Recession

Scion didn't have to go down like this. Through the magic of hindsight and hubris, it's easier to see what went wrong. And what might have been. What the industry should understand is this: Scion wasn't a losing proposition from the get-go. Its death is due to negligence and apathy. This is more than just the failure of a sub-brand. It's the failure of a company to deliver new and compelling products over an extended period of time. Toyota will point to the Great Recession as the reason it hedged its bets and withdrew funding for new vehicles, instead of using that as an opportunity to redouble efforts. This was as good as a death warrant, although myopically no one realized it at the time. Sadly, GM's Saturn experiment was a road map for this exact form of failure. No one at Toyota seemed to think the Saturn experience was worth protecting their experimental brand from. Or they weren't heard. Brands live and die on product. Somehow, Scion convinced itself that its real success metric was a youthful demographic of buyers. It seems like this was used to gauge the overall health of the brand. Look at the aging and uncompetitive tC, which Scion proudly noted had a 29-year-old average buyer. That fails to take into account its lack of curb appeal and flagging sales. Who cares if the declining number of people buying your cars are younger? Toyota is going to kill the tC thirteen years [And two indifferent generations ... - Ed.] after it was introduced. In that time, Honda has come out with three entirely new generations of the Civic. Scion wasn't a losing proposition from the get-go. Its death is due to negligence and apathy. At launch, the brand could have gone a few different ways. The xB was plucky, interesting, and useful – a tough mix of ephemeral characteristics – but the xA didn't offer much except a thin veneer of self-consciously applied attitude. That's ok; it was cute. Enter the tC, which managed to combine sporty pretensions with decent cost. It took on the Civic Coupe in the contest for coolness, and usually managed to win. More importantly, an explicit brand value early on was a desire to avoid second generations of any of its models, promising a continually evolving and fresh lineup. At this point, the road splits. Down one lane lies the Scion that could have been. After a short but reasonable product lifecycle, it would have renewed the entire lineup.

A new Toyota MR2? We want to believe

In the wake of a busy Geneva auto show, the rumor mill is churning, and the latest grist involves one of the most beloved Toyota sports cars of all time. EVO reports that Tetsuya Tada, the chief of the Scion FR-S/Toyota 86 project and a hard-liner about sportscar priorities (light and nimble, but with modest horsepower), wants a third vehicle for Toyota's nascent sporty lineup. Currently, we know there's a Supra-like vehicle in the works, being co-developed with BMW, and the 86 is sticking around. Tada said he'd like a third sportscar to compliment the two we know about, and that he wants it soon. A quick bit of history: Toyota's classic sporty lineup had three components. The most visible was the Supra, whose power and prestige grew as the car evolved from a cushy personal tourer to a high-horsepower, high-technology icon. The Celica was its Clark Kent, more mild mannered but also more accessible and affordable. The third was the MR2, a mid-engined go-kart that lasted for three distinct generations. Each had its charms, and all have their fans. When Tada says that he wants three sportscars in the lineup, we already know about the Supra successor, and the 86 is already filling the Celica's role, so the blank is easy to fill. It doesn't sound like Tada spoke the word "MR2" to EVO, or hinted that the car would be mid-engined, but Tada doesn't seem to say anything without purpose. Whatever the layout, this third car – if it comes to fruition – will probably play a role similar to the MR2 in relation to its stablemates. To translate: it'll likely be even lighter and more nimble, and probably less powerful, than the 86. The closest real-world analogue to the pure MR2 ideal is the Honda S660, a mid-engined Kei roadster that's on sale in Japan right now. It's light, small, and powered by a 0.66-liter inline-three. Toyota could decide to directly compete with the S660, borrow an engine from its small-car specialist subsidiary Daihatsu, and produce a mid-engined MR2. Another possibility, even simpler from Toyota's perspective, would be to adapt the existing Daihatsu Copen roadster. Sure, it's front-engine and front-wheel drive, but it's a small, light roadster. And even better, it sells abroad with a larger 1.3-liter engine. Restyle it slightly, perhaps to resemble the S-FR concept of a couple years ago, and it's an off-the-shelf solution. The S-FR itself is a third possibility.