The New Dude on the Road

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If Toyota is the great new American car company, can it stay nimble in the face of increased competition and quality-control challenges? Toyota executives acknowledge the need to build cars and trucks faster, cheaper and better than its rivals. That's no simple task, but Toyota has always been terrific at creating a sense of internal crisis even when times are good, persuading employees that the company will crash unless everyone, from the lowliest shopworker to the CEO, helps out to improve the bottom line. "There's a deep fear of complacency in Toyota," says Jeffrey Liker, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

The more rivals close in, the more disciplined Toyota seems to become. Since the Camry started slipping in the quality scores, managers have drilled into the consumer surveys, reading customer comments to fix peeves as minute as the sound of the trunk latch. As for eliminating waste, says Gary Convis, president of the Georgetown plant, "we're never satisfied." Convis says Toyota has cut the delivery time for custom models from 10 weeks to 10 days, and that his facility has reduced some manufacturing costs by as much as 70%. A group of assembly workers from the plant went to Wal-Mart last year hunting for cheaper bins to hold supplies along the line. Toyota now buys thousands of those bins for just $3.50 each, vs. $40 for the old ones. Convis could go on, but that would be bragging. And that wouldn't be the Toyota way. --With reporting by Jim Frederick/Tokyo, Avery Holton/Fort Worth, Hilary Hylton/Austin, Michael Peltier/Daytona Beach and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit