The United States of Toyota: How Detroit Squandered Its Legacy and Enabled Toyota to Become America's Car Company | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter M. Delorenzo
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Category: Book
List Price: $37.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 205798
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 308
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1592993028
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
EAN: 9781592993024
ASIN: 1592993028
Publication Date: September 11, 2007
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Product Description
The United States of Toyota is many stories in one. First and foremost, it is a business story, detailing the decline of the American automobile industry - and the simultaneous rise of an Asian manufacturer to take its place. It is also a history book, providing an intimate portrait of the larger-than-life personalities and cars that led the American auto industry through its glory days and down the path toward extinction. It is a political/current affairs piece, presenting the rise of a Japanese company - Toyota - not just in terms of its sales success but also in terms of its cultural success, as it works to assimilate into American society. And finally, it is a never-before-seen primer on Detroit - The Motor City - a town and a region dominated by the auto companies, their suppliers and their ad agencies - and by a mindset and culture all its own. In commentary that is as accurate as it is blunt, Peter De Lorenzo presents the players and the action in the auto business in a way not seen before in print. His voice is unique and refreshingly candid. His provocative analyses and assessments - grounded in personal experience and a lifelong immersion in all things automotive - present a compelling picture of the state of the auto business - how it used to be, what it has become and where it is headed. From the arrogance and short-sightedness of the Detroit manufacturers to the acumen and relentlessness of Toyota, The United States of Toyota paints an insightful portrait of an iconic American industry as it struggles for survival in the early years of the 21st century.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A bit too "bloggy" for a book January 17, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I became a regular reader of DeLorenzo's Autoextremist blog a few years ago, and looked forward to his weekly rants about the Detroit scene. Unfortunately, this book reads a little too much like a blog. Some of the chapters are just three or four pages, and are written in the style of blog posts. In fact, quite a bit of the prose in the book had already been previously published on the Autoextremist blog, and was immediately recognizable as such.
If you're an Autoextremist reader hoping DeLorenzo will further develop the ideas he presents on his blog, you're going to come away from this at least a little disappointed. Nobody is going to agree with every last thing he says, and some will be put off by his informal style (replete with catchphrases and vulgar language.) His strongest points are probably his dissection of Chrysler's woes and his demonstration of how Toyota's PR department so masterfully manipulates the American media (as he saves his strongest vitriol for New York Times columnist and Toyota apologist Thomas Friedman.)
 DeLorenzo--A Visionary Rebel with a Cause December 3, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"The United States of Toyota" is a must read for anyone who wants an unbiased perspective of the past, present, and possible future of U.S. auto industry. With a global economy many economists discount the fact that the fall of Detroit will impact the U.S. economy for many generations. While it is now trendy to bash Detroit for its lack of vision and poor management, Peter DeLorenzo has been warning of the demise of Detroit and the U.S. auto industry for dozens of years. Until recently very few have listened to his advice but there is still time to heed his sage advice.
A combination of historical perspective, insider secrets, reality checks, prescient predictions, dire warnings, and tongue-in-cheek irreverence, this book is informative and easy to digest. Auto industry drones, apologists, bean-counters, and "yes men" who have driven Detroit to the edge of disaster should pay special attention--remember the louder they complain the more accurate is DeLorenzo's aim.
DeLorenzo accurately points out that profits of the foreign automakers are returned home and that their respective governments do all in their power to support their own, whether currency manipulation, tax breaks, investment incentives or just plain hard ball politics. This begs the question whether there is such a thing as a truly "free economy" as we are led to believe.
DeLorenzo is a rare breed: an automotive visionary with an automotive family pedigree who has industry depth, analytical skills, automotive expertise, and racing knowledge with significant time on the track. With his "no holds barred" approach, DeLorenzo tells it like it is regardless of who may get sideways in the process.
The words of Niccolo Machiavelli, written almost five centuries ago in The Prince, still hold true for a visionary like DeLorenzo when attacked by his critics:
"It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes.... The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm, partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing authority on their side and, partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience."
DeLorenzo's long-standing advice to GM, Ford, and Chrysler that courage, vision, and significant change are needed can no longer be ignored. One can only wonder what would happen if DeLorenzo had authority for the design, manufacture, and marketing of just one division or just one product line or just one vehicle.
An Inciteful Rant November 30, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Peter Delorenzo's book is a delightful and aggressive attack on the arrogance and narrowmindedness that has driven the Detroit auto industry to the brink of disaster and that gave Toyota a huge opportunity to create its own empire with its attendant risks. The United States of Toyota is made interesting because of Delorenzo's intimate knowledge of the auto industry and because of his 'take no prisoners' style of writing. I was alternately amused and disgusted by the events he described. Even if I had not been involved in the automobile industry I would have enjoyed this book.
A much needed gadfly November 7, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Peter DeLorenzo is something that the auto industry has long needed: a gadfly. Not a car-hating, unsafe-at-any-speed the-car-is-the-source-of-all-our-problems kind of gadfly, but a car-loving gadfly.
I once worked at a Detroit ad agency where we were told not to visit Mr. Delorenzo's [...] website on the company's computers. (If you know advertising creative people, then you know that only fueled our passion to visit the site every week.)
"The United States of Toyota" is basically a compilation of Mr. Delorenzo's weekly rants from the website. His writing is brash, arrogant, egotistical, conceited, and darn near always right.
If you live somewhere other than Detroit, if you don't work in the automotive industry, then you will have a hard time believing any industry could be run like this. But I spent 25 years at it, and Peter is right.
We're now seeing the American car companies starting to do some of the things Peter has been ranting about for years, and as a result, perhaps starting to turn the corner.
I learned nothing new from the book, having read the website rants from the beginning. I bought the book mainly to show support for the one accessory American cars have long needed--a gadfly.
(Full disclosure: I worked at the same ad agency as Mr. DeLorenzo for several years, and would watch with amusement and admiration as he would appear at the office with a different car, often on a monthly basis. He would careen back and forth between every possible type of vehicle; a Jetta to a 911 to a Civic to a `70s Seville, etc. He clearly loved cars.)
A slightly slanted look at what ails Detroit November 6, 2007
9 out of 15 found this review helpful
As an auto insider, I read this book a bit more critically than most people would. While I find that DeLorenzo's criticisms are mostly valid, some of his pronouncements are contradictory. On the one hand, he blames the Detroit Three for not having seen the challenge from the imports(in terms of producing cars that people want), he also chews out unions for not giving back wages and benefits that he believes puts American vehicles at a disadvantage. So what do we have here: cars that don't excite people, or cars that are too expensive because of union labor?
Most overseas companies that manufacture in the US(Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Subaru) offer a wage and benefits package that is comparable to UAW employees, within a couple of dollars an hour(and under the recently negotiated agreements with the UAW, many new employees at the Detroit 3 will make substantially less than their counterparts at the Asian manufacturers). The difference between Detroit labor costs and, say, Toyota's is the "legacy" cost of retirees' pension and health care. Those costs are a burden to Detroit, primarily because of the auto companies failure to build those costs in during the working lifetime of the retirees. Granted, not all costs can be foreseen, but it seems like the "Big 3" fudged their obligations to make the balance sheet look better(and to pad executive compensation, lest we forget), and now it's time to pay the piper. So do current employees of the Detroit Three have to pay for the mis-steps of GM, Ford and Chrysler with respect to obligations toward retirees? Prima facie, Detroit direct labor cost is not a significant factor in the competition with the foreign companies who manufacture in the US, and American companies are beating this drum just to hide their own deficiencies.
Peter DeLorenzo devotes much of the book to alternately praising and bashing Toyota. He praises Toyota for its relentless persuit of perfection and at the same time criticizes it for "blandness". Perhaps he does not understand that "edgy" might work for niche manufacturers, but when you are trying to be Number One in the world, you are going to style cars that would have the broadest appeal. I agree with him, however, that Toyota's foray into NASCAR is a mis-step, but on the other hand it might just be a PR expense that Toyota feels is necessary to overcome import bias.
DeLorenzo is a self-professed "car guy" and you can see his bias toward other "car guys" in the business. Nothing wrong with that, except when you are building a bread-and-butter 5-seat transporter with good fuel economy and decent styling, the "car guys" usually mess it up with doo-dads that price the vehicle out of it's intended market. Look at Chrysler, with it's $38,000 Dodge Grand Caravan minivan and $50,000 Dodge Ram truck: I don't think that's where a mass-market American manufacturer should be.
As someone who makes a living in the auto industry, I have seen for myself the failure of the Detroit 3 to fully and effectively utilize tools such as Lean Processing, ISO or ANSI procedures, waste control and customer clinics. This includes things like over-production, poor material handling/packaging, tens of millions spent on "concepts" that don't have a ghost of a chance of making it into production, failure to optimize the dealer experience and so on. I have calculated that, quite literally, billions of dollars are being wasted by Detroit in costs that can be controlled almost instantly.
DeLorenzo seems to think that if you build "visceral" cars like the ones that (he claims) put Detroit at the top of the automotive heap in the 60s, you would return "desirable" to the qualities of Detroit products. But this is the 21st century, with buzz terms like "fuel efficiency", "going green", "eco-friendly" and "5-star safety" that were not part of the lexicon of the 60s. Chrysler's experiment with putting out a high-performance(read "visceral") version of almost everything they build in the form of SRT-badging has been a dismal failure except for a handful of enthusiasts. Retro-styling has pretty much run its course, and people are now looking for new, exciting and affordable products. Unfortunately, that's not something you are likely to see at a Detroit 3 showroom, with the exception of vehicles like the Corvette(which, in it's class, is outstanding value for money besides being a truly beautiful sports car).
This book gives you an insider's look at some of the politics that took Detroit down the road to mediocrity, and of the complacency and sycophancy that let the Asians eat their lunch. It is a book more valuable for it's historical insights than for it's prescription to restore Detroit to health. Unfortunately, little has changed in Motown.
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