????When the final tally was made for 2011, Toyota Motor (TM), formerly the world's largest automaker, slipped to third place in production behind General Motors (GM) and Volkswagen. It's not surprising: Toyota has endured a string of calamities over the past three years -- natural and man-made -- that would make even the company's famous paranoia seem like sunny optimism. The latest is endaka, the strong yen that causes everything that Toyota manufactures in Japan to be more expensive and undermines its profitability. A November issue of Automotive News predicted "more misery" for Toyota as "sales slip, floods delay, shoppers stray."
????At the head of the company all this time has been a young president who was effectively born into the job and has little experience in crisis management: Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder. For a decade, while the automaker was being run by professional managers, Akio rose up the corporate ladder without making much of a mark. (For the sake of clarity, we'll use his first name, pronounced a-KEY-o, in this story.) Thrust into the presidency in 2009, he immediately had to cope with a global recession, massive recalls, and a deadly tsunami. Auto production plummeted, and at the same time Toyota lost its most important competitive advantage: its reputation for exceptional quality. Americans saw Akio apologizing before Congress and later tearing up in a YouTube video. U.S. market share tumbled. After reaching 18.3% at the end in 2009, it fell all the way to 12.9% for 2011. Emboldened by the recall crisis, competitors spread word that Toyota, once considered the unstoppable force of the automotive world, had been reduced to the status of also-ran.
????But I had been hearing different things -- that Toyota had coped remarkably well with the tsunami, and that the recall crisis had served as a wake-up call for a company grown complacent. With a big boost from its new president, who took an intensely personal interest in its products, it was connecting with customers again.
????The University of Michigan's Jeffrey Liker, a leading Toyota scholar, told me, "Akio has reenergized the company. He's promised to be the closest president ever to the gemba [where the real work is happening]."
????The Toyoda scion was traveling to the U.S. more frequently to fire up dealers and had taken charge personally of the sagging Lexus brand. Independent studies were beginning to show that Toyota cars were regaining their reputation for quality and value. With 19 new or redesigned models coming in calendar 2012 -- an exceptionally large number -- including a big expansion of the Prius hybrid line, the Toyota steamroller seemed ready to regain its old momentum.
