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[rolla-XRS]

It's the best decision to hear this year. Knowing that Toyota's not wasting money on design of trivial changes to headlights, tail lights, trim, etc...and spending engineering efforts on quicker full-model refreshes. Today's buyer doesn't perceive minor refreshes as different anymore so it's wasteful efforts.

The industry in the second decade of this century will be heavily focused on a few areas - one of which is the ability of manufacturers to replace their product faster and cheaper. I sense that the days of 4-5 year model refreshes will soon drive to 3-4 years.

In general, all new products (1-2 years old) sell themselves with minimal marketing & almost not incentive efforts. Old product (3-4+ years) requires significant marketing & incentive dollars - and everyone's tired of pumping tons of money into old product with negligible sales impact. Solution: Save the incentive dollars & pump it into building new product faster.

It will be an interesting decade to see if GM & Chrysler will be able to reorganize AND put themselves into a position where they can also launch new product in less time - while maintaining quality levels. I'm a skeptic primarily since they retain the same people with the old way of thinking (so I'll keep my taxpayer chequebook handy). On the other hand, Toyota still retains much of the core values that made it successful which should position itself well to manage this challenge. Time will tell...