Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty
They might be gauging interest in it before deciding on how many to build. They don't want to build say 50,000 and only sell 35,000. Then have 15,000 sitting going for a reduced price later. That would hurt them.
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From experience with other launches, they get expressions of interest (even down to deposits on some cars), and once people find out cars just aren't coming in enough volume to meet demand, 60% back out. They hear about the next "flavour of the month" and decide to wait for that. Or in this case, jump to the BMW twin. Once early adopters start posting problems or mediocre reviews, even more people start to question the wisdom of continuing to wait.
So, in the end, they sell a lot fewer cars. Toyota doesn't need to flood the market, but they had numbers to make a business case for the car. They should have timed the release to coincide closer to actually having units to sell.
Somebody needs to throw himself on his sword, if this was the plan. The other options are that issues have come up in pre-production cars (cooling, for instance), or there are production problems.