Tsunami vs the Auto Industry. Winner: Tsunami

My cousin asked me the other day if everything is okay with Toyota because of the Tsunami. I said "good question!". Most of the line-up is built all or in part in North America and I would think the Lexus line-up would be an issue in a couple of months time when inventory (in Canada) dries up. (Supposedly 75% of the Lexus line-up is built in Japan - with the RX Ultra Premium model built here).

According to www.autocarpress.com Honda has been hit with fires and Toyota already broke the rhythm of four plants. The tsunami struck Nissan's factory in Tochigi, where the famous GT-R is made.  And unconfirmed reports that they lost 5,000 Infiniti's (which on the scale of world-wide production goes is small). Sad. Very. 


I was talking with one of my colleagues if he knew if the nuclear facilities were close to any of the car plants. He jokingly said that we'd be delivering Japanese cars with "premium" paint that glowed! And that the Japanese would throw in a free Geiger Counter! Honestly, I had to look up the term (wiki-defin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter). Yes, the joke was very wrong.











CNBC Correspondent, Phil LeBeau, seems to think that this will effect domestic brands also because of car component suppliers not being able to deliver and hinder production here (in North America). All joking aside, seems like we are going to have to wait and see what all this will do to the industry and hopefully it will just be a little bump in the road.