As Toyota stumbles through its worst patch ever, with new
setbacks popping up every day–yesterday it was the brakes on the Prius, today it's the steering on Camrys–it's worth a
look back at the early days of the Japanese giant's conquest of America's hearts,
minds, and car lots, courtesy of John Updike's Rabbit is Rich (hat tip: Nigeness):
"Running out of gas, Rabbit Angstrom thinks as he stands
behind the summer-dusty windows of the Spring Motors display room watching the
traffic go by on Route 111, traffic somehow thin and scared compared to what it
used to be. The fucking world is running out of gas. But they won’t catch him,
not yet, because there isn’t a piece of junk on the road gets better mileage
than his Toyotas, with lower service costs … That’s all he has to tell people
when they come in. And come in they do, the people out there are getting
frantic, they know the great American ride is ending … He tells them, whey they
buy a Toyota, they’re turning their dollars into yen. And they believe him. A
hundred units new and used moved in the first five months of 1979, with eight
Corollas, five Coronas including a Luxury Edition Wagon, and that Celica that
Charlie said looked like a Pimpmobile unloaded in these first three weeks of
June already, at an average markup of eight hundred dollars per sale. Rabbit is
Rich."
Oddly, however, for all his admiration for the marque, Updike himself never owned a Toyota; as I discussed in a short piece on the man and his cars, it was all he could do to overcome an innate Nippophobia and buy anything Japanese. When he finally did, he ended up with Infinitis and Subarus, not Toyotas. Well, never mind. Toyota's a great company. Its woes will pass. There's nothing new under the rising sun.
