With the excitement of the launch and the recall behind us, things began to settle into a monthly routine. We now had 103 dealers active, and the plan was for another 20 to be active by the end of the year. Car industry sales through June of 1990 were down from...
Toyota in Japan was concerned that the Lexus LS400s in the U.S. were being sent back to Japan and re-sold at much higher prices. This sometimes happens when a car is not available in a certain market, and the LS400 was not yet being sold in Japan. The industry...
Cynthia and I were invited to Yuki Togo’s home for a dinner with the other senior Japanese and American managers and their wives. It would be the first and most memorable of all the dinners we would have at Yuki’s, who was the president of Toyota USA. It...
The Lexus customer satisfaction department set up a system to call the first Lexus LS400 owners to listen to their reactions to the car and record any complaints. Each associate in the division, including myself, was given the names of customers to call. The...
Although Nissan had announced the formation of the Infiniti division in July of 1987, a full month ahead of Toyota, it did not start selling cars until two months after Lexus. They had half as many dealers and only sold about 2,000 cars in 1989. ...
Auto industry analysts forecast the 1990 luxury car market to remain flat. This meant that for Lexus to achieve our 60,000 sales goal, we needed to take sales away from the our competitors. Lexus was also trying to establish itself as the number-one...
At the 1989 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, we had introduced the Lexus LS400 amid all the chaos surrounding the name. Since then we had secured the name, launched the car with rave reviews, and met our initial sales goal of 16,000. At the...
I often bragged to people at work that my senior year in high school I sang a solo in the Linsly Military Institute talent show. When my fellow associates prodded me to sing for them, I always refused. However, I did foolishly agree to sing a solo for everyone...
Throughout 1989, dramatic changes were happening around the world. The Cold War had begun to thaw with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. In China, student protestors seeking more individual freedoms clashed with hardline Chinese Communist Party...
Dick Chitty commented, “Well, I guess we are going to find out if that Lexus Covenant we all signed means anything.” We decided to craft our response to the recall around that commitment. We and the dealers had all signed the Lexus Covenant agreeing to exceed...
Word spread throughout the organization of the trouble. It got tense. In addition, November sales were disappointing and added to my anxiety. The LS400 exceeded its goal of 2,500 with 2,738 sales, but the ES250 fell short of its 1,500 objective again with only...
It was the Monday morning after Thanksgiving when Dick Chitty, Lexus vice president of service and customer relations, came into my office. I could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong. There was an awkward silence. I sensed this was not going...