Toyota Announces Larger Q1 Loss Than GM
In what may come as a shock to all the Detroit bashers out there, Toyota announced a huge first quarter loss along with a substantial loss for the entire year. It's Toyota's first such full year loss in decades.

The news flies in the face of the constant rhetoric in the news regarding the Big Three. Most pundits love to say that if GM and Chrysler had only built smaller, more efficient cars they would be in such a financial mess.

Well, the company that most often trotted out as the model for success is now in trouble too, so we'll see what those same pundits have to say now. This time maybe they'll blame it on the world economy as a whole, and they might even be right.

http://blogs.edmunds.com/straightlin...s-than-gm.html

What this shows is that the losses of the automakers has little to do with their product mix and a lot to do with the economies of scale that require certain minimum sales levels to make the companies profitable. It also suggest that the administrations requirements that the companies make more fuel efficient cars will not increase sales.