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Some of your response is a non-sequitur. The argument on the table is: > Toyota makes fairly boring products of the last century. Toyota sells around 10mm car

Some of your response is a non-sequitur. The argument on the table is: > Toyota makes fairly boring products of the last century. Toyota sells around 10mm cars a year. Only about a fifth of those sales take place in Canada, US, and Mexico. The demand picture for EVs and vehicles in general is not uniform across geography. Some places like small cars, others big; some places like EVs, others have no chargers; some places buy new cars, others can't afford it. BTW Mexico has a different mix of vehicles because much of the first-world production happens within the country. And Chile has the highest median income of all Latin America. Extrapolating from some perception about the Chilean or Mexican auto market is a poor way to characterize LatAm in general. > On the other hand there is another yuppie fanboy harping about "muh hilix" despite the fact that Toyota has lied through its teeth about rust in North America for ~30yr, the Hilux/LC aren't outstandingly (in the literal sense) popular in Asia and people in Africa/ME will bolt a machine gun to anything that runs regardless of brand. OK so this is a bit more on topic. The Hilux is a great truck (even ISIS likes it) but I'm not talking about the Hilux and yuppies. I'm telling you that there are people who make $400/mo who are proud to buy a 10yo Toyota. They don't approach vehicle purchases the same way that an American would. The concept that a car is "last century" is absolutely ridiculous to that segment of the auto market. Those people don't buy these vehicles because of status, they buy them because the local mechanic tells them that the motors don't need to be rebuilt so often. Case study: Ecuador. Import tariffs make autos cost approximately double what they cost in the US, perhaps more. A Ford Raptor costs US$150k. Income disparity means there isn't a vibrant middle class. Fuel is subsidized; the country produces a half-million barrels of oil daily and has three refineries. Much of the transit (including in the Quito metropolitan area) occurs through mountains where roads are poor quality. Road closures due to landslides are common. A used Suzuki Grand Vitara that costs $700 in the US might go for $4,000 in Ecuador. You have this concept that people in the third world model their choices on the preferences of rich people. I don't believe that's true. Income disparity is so broad, and the middle class so narrow, that most non-rich people in LatAm just make do and try to survive.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
Toyota must be the prestige brand in India. I live in a small town dominated by a Fortune 250 who employs thousands of H1-B's, mostly from India. About 90% of them drive Toyotas. The pattern is easily noticeable. It's also home to Toyota forklifts (TIEM), and, of course, lots of people at that company drive one. Me? I own 4 Hondas. ;-)
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I made no mention of the buyer's motives. You're not understanding or ignoring what I wrote. The availability of vehicles in the 3rd world is determined in large part by the used car market in the first world (with south America depending more to north America and Africa/ME depending more on Europe) Exporters buy from auctions just like the rest of the used car dealers. Everybody steers clear of vehicles that have been used hard. The used car dealers steer clear of cars too old for prospective buyers to get a car loan on. The lower down the economic ladder you go the harder people are on vehicles and the more likely they are to keep them until they are totally clapped our and the more likely they are to sell private party. This means that the cars the dealers and the exporters want to buy are the upper middle class trade ins that were never smoked in that were kept clean and maintained, etc with the importers erring toward 10yo+ ones that the dealers don't want as badly. The net result is that the vehicles of the upper middle class are over-represented in the set of vehicles that exporters steer themselves towards. If every dumb yuppie in the US and Europe woke up tomorrow and decided they would only commute in blue cars from now on then in 10yr we'd have morons on the internet making up reasons that blue cars are more reliable and using their prevalence in the 3rd world as evidence. Of course there's market specific models and locally made stuff available too but I'm not talking about those and that's not the avenue from which cars that have a 20k+ MSRP appear in those markets.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

Toyota must be the prestige brand in India. I live in a small town dominated by a Fortune 250 who employs thousands of H1-B's, mostly from India. About 90% of them drive Toyotas. The pattern is easily noticeable. It's also home to Toyota forklifts (TIEM), and, of course, lots of people at that company drive one. Me? I own 4 Hondas. ;-)

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

I made no mention of the buyer's motives. You're not understanding or ignoring what I wrote. The availability of vehicles in the 3rd world is determined in large part by the used car market in the first world (with south America depending more to north America and Africa/ME depending more on Europe) Exporters buy from auctions just like the rest of the used car dealers. Everybody steers clear of vehicles that have been used hard. The used car dealers steer clear of cars too old for prospective buyers to get a car loan on. The lower down the economic ladder you go the harder people are on vehicles and the more likely they are to keep them until they are totally clapped our and the more likely they are to sell private party. This means that the cars the dealers and the exporters want to buy are the upper middle class trade ins that were never smoked in that were kept clean and maintained, etc with the importers erring toward 10yo+ ones that the dealers don't want as badly. The net result is that the vehicles of the upper middle class are over-represented in the set of vehicles that exporters steer themselves towards. If every dumb yuppie in the US and Europe woke up tomorrow and decided they would only commute in blue cars from now on then in 10yr we'd have morons on the internet making up reasons that blue cars are more reliable and using their prevalence in the 3rd world as evidence. Of course there's market specific models and locally made stuff available too but I'm not talking about those and that's not the avenue from which cars that have a 20k+ MSRP appear in those markets.