I hope someone at Toyota is reading this right now.

Toyota has been slipping(in my minds-eye) the last 2-2.5 years(ever since the ending of the xA, xB1 , and Echo). Its like Toy. slashed these cars to make consumers buy other Toy.'s or a hybrid(which I know isn't the case.. but I'm sure they knew the invoice/msrp on these cars and were like... uhhhhh thats a great bang for the buck there, in terms of reliability and fuel efficentcy :-) The only low priced car that gets good mpg(upper 30's or 40's) not including a hybrid is the xD or Yaris. To me, its like Toyota is pushing the Prius thing big time.. getting people to by hybrid to then get 50+ mpg , but have to shell out $10,000+ for a prius vs. a Yaris/xD.

The one good thing Toy. has done in the last couple of years is develop the vvt-i system, so now its DVVT-i (more fuel efficentcy) , otherwise I am not excited about Toy. right now.

I'd say Nissan(Cube, 370z, GT-R ... heck, even the Versa has a 6-speed in it ) is looking impressive, and Hundai(sp) posted yearly profits ++ (no other car manufacture can say that). Honda keeps developing its fuel efficentcy(Civic Hybrid was considered the most fuel efficient of 2008 I believe.. with that 68 mpg average). Kia and others are moving on up.

Me thinks Toyota thinks its brand image will not be hurt 3-5 years from now if they don't push their product line futher.. and develop new things(minus the new Prius... sounds tech savy). They have not had a sports car since(2005- MRS- Spyder) which was a good/decent little 2 seater roadster, and even before that it was 1998(Supra) - over 10 years ago!!!! One part(fairly big component) of car innovation starts at the sports car phase. What a car manuf. has at least one sports car, some of those awesome technologies then eventually trickle down to other cars in the product line 2-5 years later. It may come back to bit them in the azzzzz 3-6 yrs from now if other car manuf. are putting out just as good of a product (or better product).