Reply #63: They were once masters of perception management

[Mopar151]

They had low repair costs because their maintainence schedules were so rigorus that they included items listed as repairs on many other brands - and if an owner did not follow that schedule, any repair incurred did'nt count, because the car had'nt been maintained.
Toyota pickups have been rust buckets since the original Hilux in the '70's. Toyota was able to shift some blame to the US made truckbeds (the trucks were imported unfinished, to save duties). I don't know what went wrong with the frames in detail - I suspect that Detroit's, and Northern Europe's, engineers are better attuned to the problems of salted roads than the Japanese. And Toyota was willing to put a LOT of cash into buying back trucks with frame failure, and scrapping them. I can tell you that every 4th 'Yota in northern New England sports some kind of homemade bed.
And hubris played a part, and has for a long time. Toyota has trouble brewing with some of their automatic transmissions - they are trying to keep it under wraps, so much so that the dealers do not repair transmissions - they are swapped out, and sent back to Toyota - because that keeps the mechanics from finding out what the problem is.