Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Just another year for Toyota. There's a good read about Toyota. The book is called something like the "Toyota way" and explains a lot about their success and business methods.
MIT did a book called the machine that changed the world about Toyota and lean production. Nowdays, though, all manufacturers subscribe pretty heavily tho those. Still, it teaches you that Toyota didn't set out to make reliable cars. The least expensive way to make a car was to design one unlikely to fail to save money on quality control and for faster assembly. At the time of the book Mercedes spent more time doing quality control per vehicle than Lexus did making one. It's a good read, though Bob Lutz writes pretty good books about that era as well.
As to the profits, keep in mind that the automotive industry still isn't a very high profit margin industry. They have a lot of profits because they have a lot of revenue. They have a lot of revenue because they are huge.