Toyota, Toyota and more Toyota

April 3, 2008

BY IRV LEAVITT Staff Writer

What makes a best-selling car?

Think mashed potatoes beating out brown rice, Labrador retrievers over pit bulls, governors defeating senators as presidential candidates: bland but positive products with fewer obvious negatives than their competition.

Think the 1960s Chevy Impala, the 1980s Ford Taurus and the U.S. sales champ of recent years, the Toyota Camry.

“It’s a nice, inoffensive, not-snotty car,” said Jill Ciminillo, car reviewer at searchchicagoautos.com. “If you drive a BMW, people will have an opinion about you. If you drive a Camry, it’s hard for people to make opinions. But it’s reliable, has good gas mileage, very good maintenance, attractive styling.

“You can use it to take your boss to the airport.

“It drives well, and it’s probably not going to be one of those cars thieves target to break into.”

Toyotas, in general, rule the North Shore. The secretary of state found more of them registered in eight North Shore towns than Fords and Chevys combined.

In an examination of the top 10 cars and model years for each town, 52 slots were filled by Toyotas. And of those, 27 were Camrys, ranging from the 1996 model to 2007.

The favorite Toyota-made car in five towns was the 2004 Lexus RX330, but its popularity is rooted in different soil than Camry’s, said John Greening, a marketing expert at Northwestern University.

Greening, who led ad campaigns for Budweiser and other top brands for decades, bought a Lexus RX330 in 2004, then did it again in 2005.

He said 2004 styling changes set apart SUVs forever from the cars “that were just a place where kids go to spill fruit juice.

“I think that what they finally did was crack the code: style and function both,” he said.

He added that Toyota, long a perceived leader in technology and reliability like Apple computers, added good design to its resume — especially for one SUV.

A long line of SUVs, foreign and domestic, tried to catch up with the RX330 on style, both Ciminillo and Greening say. None, however, have been as successful, they added.

Since 2004, Toyota has continued to innovate, with new Scion SUVs and a higher-tech Highlander hybrid, Ciminillo said. But for a year or so, she said, Toyota seems quiet, while General Motors, its competitor for U.S. sales leadership, seems more aggressive.

GM has 100 fuel cell-powered Chevrolet Equinoxes being tested by drivers around the country, Ciminillo said, while Toyota has no fuel cell cars on the street.

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