Toyota, Facing Crisis, Turns to Founding Family Scion

Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota Motor Corp.’s founder and the company’s next president, will confront a challenge largely unknown to his ancestors: decline.

But Toyoda won't be able to save the day for the company his grandfather founded because with the Japanese government no longer intervening to keep the yen weak and with Japan's markets far more open now than in past decades, Japanese automakers will begin to look eerily similar to Detroit's Big 3.

Without the help of protectionism and subsidies, Toyota, Nissan and Honda will lose their comparative advantage. In the end people will come to realize that the success of Toyota and other Japanese automakers had nothing to do with Detroit's cost structure or lack of competitiveness. It had everything to do with Japanese industrial and export policy.

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