Toyota has revealed its global vision, this global automotive company wants to achieve annual sale of 10 million vehicles by 2015. Toyota has always strategized to achieve quality control, customer satisfaction and solid profits.Now Toyota has exposed its goal in numbers.Last year Toyota achieved the sales target of 8.42 million globally. It succeeded to over take GM motors that achieved the sales target of 8.39 million globally. Before this, GM motors was at no1in vehicle sales since 76 years.

Akio, the president of Toyota Motors said, “We want to make our customers happy”. You might be thinking what made the Toyota motors for this furious move? Actually recent recalls of its vehicles due to some issues, induced this global automobile company to redefine its vision as well to refine its quality control.

Toyota always acted on the strategy of “Total quality Management” in order to deliver World Class quality vehicles to its customers. That’s why it is keen to solve the quality issues in some of its vehicles and wants to retain its good will among global customers.

Sales target of 10 millions means more customers, in fact more satisfied customers. As Toyota is working on rapid growth strategy, hopefully it will achieve the desired target till 2015.

GM

The recession has really pulled in a shade in the amount of sales but there are higher end profits to be deduced with the new plans. The July 29th interview with the chairman of GM revealed their new plans where they are expected to make higher end profits with the new senses of the GM to do more of their expected sales.

The chairman said that this would mean a new direction for GM as they resume leasing on luxury vehicles again. The market is now getting more stabilized and heavier to deal with fresh waves. There are logical portions of profits about to be pulled out through this way.

The leasing also frees up credits for customers and so many prefer using high brand cars that way. So overall it seems to be a grand move for GM to move back into the lease market.

Source: autoweek

The car feels like a true offspring of C4 Corvette Coupe and a Dodge Viper. Though the car is not anyway near in size or in power as these two American giants, all the features and merits of these two cars is present in this little coupe and this makes it unique in its cadre.

This car was spanned during the Bob Luz era at the GM. Bob is a true leader and one who values others creativity and innovation. He always wanted some new ideas from his designers and the first task he assigned to his designers when he joined GM in 2001 was to create a new concept or idea for the Detroit Auto Show. This has resulted in this grand coupe, Solstice.

Now with the company struck hard by the recession, Lutz is winding down his time at the company and as a result Solstice and the entire Pontiac are also fading slowly. Solstice is undoubtedly a true symbol of what went right and what went wrong with GM and Pontiac.

The original designs of this coupe were made by Franz Von Holzhausen, a newbie in the General Motor’s design studio at that time. From then on, Von Holzhausen has had tenure at Mazda and currently he leads a design team at Tesla Motors which works on the Model S.electric sedan. The designs were created by Von in the early 2002 for Detroit and Chicago auto shows and it was only in 2008 New York Auto show the coupe went to its production version.

The interiors of the coupe are tightly fit but are comfortable enough to provide the right amount of space. The center tunnel in the coupe is tall and wide to accommodate the transmission and the drive shaft. Unlike other sports cars, the coupe lacks dozens of buttons on its dashboard controlling its features. The seating position and the comfort are not up to the mark and the gaps between the dashboard and the doors are also uneven.

There is also an issue of visibility in this solstice coupe. With the roof panel, looking out of the low windshield requires you to lean ahead to see the traffic lights. It is indeed a difficult thing to do when you ought to concentrate more on road and drive.

The side glasses placed also do not encourage much as the side view is also not quite clear. Though there where initial doubts about the poor top mechanism employed for this coupe, the Pontiac now comes with a fold-up soft top that can be packed and kept inside. But this does not come with the base price as it is an $1100 option.