Toyota was riding high in mid-2008 as buyers flocked to its showrooms in search of fuel efficient vehicles, but the second-half economic downturn turned the automaker’s once busy showrooms into ghost towns. Toyota’s latest 0 percent financing campaign did little to stimulate sales, which has the Japanese automaker readying another approach.
Instead of focusing on the financing side, Toyota’s next sales campaign will focus more on incentives and cash back. “The shift that you’ll see in January from December is more consumer cash and less APR and lease support through our dealers,” Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., told Automotive News.
Despite Toyota’s 0 percent financing sale late last year, the company’s December sales were down 36.7 percent. Truck sales were even further off, with most models posting 50 percent decreases from December 2007. Perhaps most telling of Toyota’s struggles, the once backordered Prius hybrid saw a sales drop of 44 percent in December.
Toyota has yet to announce when the new sale will kick off, but we expect to hear more on the subject in the coming days.
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