Wednesday, February 3, 2010

POLL: Will the recent recalls affect your next car purchase?


Branding is a hell of a thing. Toyota has as very well-branded company. However, when this whole unintentional acceleration thing dropped, the brand's image—and sales—began a downward spiral. It is now the talk of the automotive Internet, and the Toyota bashing has gone into full throttle ... pun intended.

Keep in mind not all Toyotas/Lexus vehicles were recalled, and none of the Scions were part of this. But how much damage has been done to the brand's sterling brand image?

Will this make people think twice about buying a Toyota product?

Also remember: Nearly 650,000 Honda Fits/Jazzes have also recently been recalled worldwide due to potentially faulty window wiring (which killed a child in South Africa).

Will these recalls affect the sales of Japanese autos as as whole?

The other wildcard will be this: Will these recent recalls make more consumers think about purchasing a European, Korean, or American brand of automobile? Only time will tell. However, tell us what you think.

2 comments:

D2M said...

I was just reading about Toyota's break woes. It's gotta suck to be them right now. Especially with Ford and the Korean cars making such a good effort.

nlpnt said...

I was leaning Fiesta or 2 anyway so voted "no", but I won't be in the market for a while. Jan 2011 is the last Yaris payment, and I want to have a couple years of no car payment; by that time I'm suer there'll be a full redesign of the Yaris and possibly the Fit, the GM and Ford offerings'll have established themselves and there might be some nteresting Fiat-based offerings from Mopar.