{"id":5416,"date":"2013-10-09T08:33:51","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T14:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5416"},"modified":"2013-10-09T08:33:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T14:33:51","slug":"casanovas-on-foot-baffle-toyota-ceo-as-japan-sales-shrink-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5416","title":{"rendered":"Casanovas on Foot Baffle Toyota CEO as Japan Sales Shrink: Cars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-10-07\/casanovas-on-foot-baffle-toyota-ceo-as-japan-sales-shrink-cars.html\">Yuki Hagiwara, Ma Jie &#038; Anna Mukai<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) President Akio Toyoda is on the cusp of a record year for profit, kids nowadays make him nervous. They\u2019re so clueless that boys without cars have the nerve to ask girls out.<\/p>\n<p>Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., center, who\u2019s said he loves the smell of gasoline, talked about his passion for cars and how they shouldn\u2019t be commoditized like fridges, but rather loved like babies or pets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the past, if you wanted to date someone, you couldn\u2019t ask her out if you didn\u2019t have a car,\u201d Toyoda, 57, told a packed auditorium of about 900 Meiji University students in Tokyo on Sept. 26. \u201cIt\u2019s all changed now. Money goes on monthly phone bills. Also, parking\u2019s expensive and it\u2019s easy to get around Tokyo on public transport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though he\u2019s kidding about the dating, the underlying theme is no joke. Among the biggest conundrums facing automakers: how to make cars cool again. Japan\u2019s aging population makes the mission more critical, with passenger-vehicle sales more than 20 percent down from their 1990 highs and the proportion of drivers in their 20s at half the level when Toyoda\u2019s generation reached an age when they could sit behind the wheel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYounger Japanese are quite different from the older Japanese and cars mean much less to many than 20 or 25 years ago,\u201d said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo, who\u2019s been in Japan since the 1970s. \u201cThey\u2019re more interested in tech gadgets, like the iPhone. Young people nowadays don\u2019t have the money to buy cars too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, Toyoda is leading a one-month campaign to preach the virtues of being a motorhead to students. The presidents of Honda Motor Co., Subaru-maker Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (7270) and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (7211) plan to follow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yuki Hagiwara, Ma Jie &#038; Anna Mukai: While Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) President Akio Toyoda is on the cusp of a record year for profit, kids nowadays make him nervous. They\u2019re so clueless that boys without cars have the nerve to ask girls out. Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., center, who\u2019s said he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}