Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Toyota dealership visit in suburban Tokyo

Jan 18, 2009 22:50 pm / Add a comment

http://www.flickr.com/photos/projectkobo/sets/72157612706079650/

Buy­ing an auto­mo­bile has never been an option to me since I moved from the US to Tokyo.  Why would I want a car?  Trains and buses are so cheap, they are every­where, runs on time, clean, safe.  Taxis aren’t so expen­sive.  If I needed to drive some­where for some rea­son, I would rent a nice car for US$100.00 a day. If I had a car, in addi­tion to the pay­ment for the car itself, I would have to pay extra US$150.00 per month for park­ing space at our condo.  The annual auto insur­ance fee and taxes aren’t exactly cheap either.

So when my hus­band said to me, hey, let’s visit the Toy­ota deal­er­ship next door, when we were hang­ing out at a diner, I first said, why??  He said he just wanted to check out the cur­rent model and get some cat­a­logues.  I reluc­tantly agreed.  I am NOT inter­ested in stuff that’s com­pletely unnec­ces­sary in our lives, let alone stuff that’s un-environmental.

But I decided to put on my researcher’s hat and enjoy the visit.  And I really did!

Come to think of it, I pur­chased cars 5 times in my life, all in the US.  I pur­chased brand new cars twice, through auto­mo­bile deal­er­ship.  They were Toy­ota Corolla and Nis­san Sen­tra.  I haven’t had a car since 1991.  Although my hus­band and I had no inten­tion of buy­ing any car right now, the expe­ri­ence was fas­ci­nat­ing for me.

The sales guy was good.  He was good at draw­ing out infor­ma­tion from us, good at explain­ing things.  We had no inten­tion of stay­ing at all, but he got us to be seated and made us fresh cof­fee, and we had a nice leisurely con­ver­sa­tion about how own­ing car would help our lives.  At first, I was look­ing around for cues for Toy­ota sus­tain­abil­ity story, but what caught my atten­tion was fea­tures for elderly and hand­i­capped.  I sud­denly remem­bered my mother-in-law who lives with us.  Her sis­ter who lives in other region of Japan can’t walk much any­more.  Although my mother-in-law is healthy and takes great care of all of us now, I saw that the day of own­ing an auto­mo­bile might come after all, even though it may be a few years down the road.  My inter­est level jumped then.

I wanted to see how the sales rep will steer us, and with my hus­band, he talked about the fea­tures of their van, and when I asked ques­tions about fea­tures for tak­ing care of elderly and hand­i­capped, and about sus­tain­abil­ity issues, he gave me good information.

From the way he talked, I real­ized that most of the peo­ple com­ing in to their deal­er­ship are mainly con­cerned with get­ting the value for the money.  He focused on how high the resale price was for Prius, and how much gas it saves.  It reminded me of the kind of talk that are so ubiq­ui­tus with Toy­ota man­agers.  When we talked about sus­tain­abil­ity issues about facil­i­ties, we came down to effi­ciency.  It is what the Toy­ota buy­ers would demand.  I guess peo­ple who cares most about design, style and cool­ness would go to sexy brands.

The deal­er­ship show­room was clean, well orga­nized, friendly, help­ful.  Kid’s area to keep the small chil­dren enter­tained.  Nice drinks.  Not ornate, not showy, but then maybe that fits the Toy­ota brand.

The sales rep man­aged to get my husband’s busi­ness card at the end, and even our home address.  And guess what?  At about 6:30 PM of the same day, he dropped by our home to deliver a quote for Prius!!  When I said to my hus­band, you were focus­ing on High­ace (van), but he brough the quote for Prius?  He answered, yeah, but you were only ask­ing about Prius and said for our fam­ily, High­ace would not be prac­ti­cal.  He’s a good sales rep.  He knows who man­ages the fam­ily bank account.  Actu­ally, I don’t man­age our fam­ily bank account.  We do it the Amer­i­can style, which is hus­band tak­ing care of that.  In Japan, wives take care of fam­ily finance, and any­time a fam­ily makes big invest­ment, it’s always the wife who is the final deci­sion maker.

I enjoyed the visit to auto­mo­bile deal­er­ship so much, I am ready to visit Honda, Nis­san, BMW, Audi deal­er­ships, since these are other ones that are doing so well here now.  Their brand sto­ries are very dif­fer­ent from Toy­ota too.  I won­der if my hus­band will come with me??

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