Toyota has seen a huge drop in sales as the company faces an ever-widening global recall.
The automaker's number of units sold in the US for January fell by 16 percent compared to the same period last year to approximately 99-thousand vehicles.
According to the Wall Street Journal this is the first time in 11 years that the company's sales volume dropped below 100-thousand cars.
Meanwhile, US automakers Ford and General Motors reported year-on-year sales increases of 25 percent and 14 percent, respectively, last month.
And Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group sales in January were also up by 13 percent compared to the same month in 2009.
The market share of the Korean company rose by 2.2 percent from the previous month to 7.5 percent.
[Interview : Koh Tae-bong, Senior Analyst
IBK Securities Co.] "The change in market share was quite big considering the short time period left in January after Toyota recalled its vehicles in the US on the 21st. The recall has made it difficult for the Japanese automaker to secure its market share while it was an opportunity for the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group to perform relatively well."
However, experts in Seoul warn that Korean automakers might encounter the same problems that led the troubled Japanese company to a massive recall as they have been benchmarking Toyota over the past few years by building manufacturing plants around the world.
Experts say that the nation's automakers can learn from the most important lessons
that the Toyota fiasco has left.
They first point out that Korean carmakers should not pursue quantity over quality saying that Toyota had tried "to get too big, too fast."
They say if a car manufacturer starts to focus on increasing the volume of output in order to expand their business abroad there is a high possibility that it will fail in quality control.
[Interview : Kim Pil-soo, Professor
Daelim University] "About 50 percent of Toyota's parts and components are known to be supplied through global outsourcing programs as they wanted to rapidly expand their production and sales in the overseas market. However, if quality control gets out of hand in the outsourcing process it is quite obvious that flaws will be detected in the finished products."
Toyota's lesson also tells Korean makers to avoid excessive cuts to gain price competitiveness in the market.
Experts warn that pressuring part suppliers to lower unit costs will leave them with few resources for R&D activities, which in turn will lead to low-quality parts products.
And another lesson from the Toyota debacle could be to promptly respond to the needs and complaints of the customers.
The crisis worsened as the company refrained from taking appropriate measures immediately to tackle the defects discovered in its vehicles.
Eoh Jin-joo, Arirang News.
FEB 09, 2010
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Friday, SEP 03, 2010, (KST) 
