A senior Toyota Motor Corp. executive told The Detroit News today that the failure of one of Detroit's Big Three automakers would be devastating for his company.
"We want everyone to succeed," said Steve St. Angelo, head of Toyota's Kentucky assembly plant and senior vice president in charge of engineering and manufacturing for North America. "Competition is good for us. The customers are the big winners, because it makes all of us better."
He added that Toyota depends on many of the same companies that provide parts to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC.
"We share many of the same suppliers, so if one of our suppliers has difficulty with either Chrysler, GM or Ford, there's a good chance they are going to have difficulty for us," he said.
And, St. Angelo said, the entire economy benefits from a strong domestic auto industry.
"When GM, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota are healthy, the economy is stable and it's the best for all of us," he said.
Japan's largest automaker has passed Ford to become the second biggest car company in the United States and is challenging GM to become first in the world.
But St. Angelo said Toyota is doing what it can within the constraints of U.S. anti-trust rules to help its U.S. rivals.
"When any of our competitors want to come to our plants, we let them," he said. "We really don't want anybody to go bankrupt."
In recent months, many on Wall Street have openly worried that could be the fate of both Chrysler and GM.
But they, along with Ford, have taken unprecedented steps to turn their U.S. operations around.
"If you really look at the leaders of the Detroit Three, they're some of the finest leaders that this business has ever had," St. Angelo said. "I hope and I think that they'll come out of this. It would help our company. It would help America. It would help our suppliers. It would help everyone."
