for Toyota

Here are my thoughts about Toyota's cars.

The Corolla, excellent car.

The Camry... it's like the Corolla's older brother.

The Solara... it's pretty much a two door Camry, only uglier. How could such a small car be so big?

The Yaris... it was available a few years ago as an Echo, but few people bought them then, it wasn't really an exciting car, kinda like an uglier version of a Corolla that was left on too hot of a setting.  But now it has turned into a small little exciting car, well, at least the hatch back version.  The sedan is pretty much a smaller, less expensive, Corolla.

The new Matrix looks like it ate something sour.

The Sienna.  Why is this not available in a hybrid version yet?  They're mostly driven by delivery drivers and moms, both of whom could greatly benefit from a Synergy drive system.

The Avalon.  Pretty much the closest you can get to a Lexus but still having "Toyota" written on the bumper.

The Tacoma and the Tundra.  One of the biggest things needed with trucks is towing capacity, so why do these not have Synergy systems?  Electric motors have huge amounts of torque, perfect for trucks.

The Rav4.  Really it's just a Corolla that was stretched upwards.... and has 4 wheel drive available.

The 4Runner.  A pretty smart idea, a general all purpose SUV that isn't too big, but still has plenty of room.

The Highlander I've always seen as an SUV for people who don't want their SUV to look tough.

The FJ Cruiser finally brought Toyota back into the serious off-road car category.

The Sequoia. Toyota named their biggest car after America's biggest tree.  I guess it sounds a bit better than The Toyota Enormous.

The Land Cruiser,  if you need a big off-road car to drive across the desert, in comfort, buy that one.

The Toyota Prius.  After being on sale for over 6 years, the Prius is still setting the standard for fuel milage and emissions in the U.S.

Toyota really needs to bring a sports car back to the market.

How to sell SUVs - for the auto industry based in Detroit

It's clear that people are buying fewer SUVs now after the recent spike in fuel prices, and after the huge change of smaller more efficient (and easier to park) cars becoming more trendy.

But there are still people out there who need SUVs. And currently with the economy not doing so great there are many people trying to sell their SUVs for something smaller.  Some car dealers even stopped accepting trade-in SUVs because they could not sell them themselves.

So here is what detroit needs to do:

Next year, only build, say, 1,000 of each model of each SUV.  Don't make it a special edition, or make any sort of anything special about it, just limit it to 1,000.  When they are gone, they will be gone, and the resale value of  all other SUVs will increase.  There are people that need them, so lets not have all the extra ones just sitting around.   And then you will not have all these extra ones sitting around the following year that you need to sell at a loss just to get them off the lot.