丰田汽车活力变身进行时

    密歇根州特洛伊市思迈汽车咨询公司（IHS Automotive）高级分析师斯蒂芬妮•布林利说：“丰田曾表示要注重情感化设计，而花冠便是证明。”她说：“它将为丰田的新一代架构（丰田新全球架构，即TNGA）确定基调。”这个架构将生产更多的通用部件，借此实现加快汽车研发和削减成本的目的。新花冠并没有体现TNGA架构；她表示，丰田将于2015年推出基于TNGA架构生产的车型。

    大众汽车曾公开讨论过，公司工程师如何利用更少的架构来开发不同规格和不同品牌的汽车——进而达到降低车辆成本的目的。而大众汽车可以将所节省的成本用于降低价格或增加高级内容，提高大众汽车的吸引力。

    丰田汽车美国销售业务执行长、丰田章男的顾问稻叶良出席了花冠汽车发布会。他确认，TNGA平台正在建设当中，而且这个平台确实是受到大众汽车的“启发”，但具体方法与大众汽车有所不同。

    将从开发花冠（目前全球销量达到4,000万辆）等面向全球的车型中节省的成本用于开发昂贵的新技术和新车型，这无疑是丰田章男的智囊所期待看到的情形。当然，华丽的汽车发布会自然也不必多说。

    毫无疑问，与2009年相比，如今的丰田汽车公司更有活力。消费者是不是也觉得丰田的新车型更加令人兴奋呢？答案不久就会揭晓。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    "The Corolla backs up Toyota's stated intent for emotional design," said Stephanie Brinley, senior of IHS Automotive in Troy, Mich. This model may "set the tone," she said, for what the company is calling the Toyota New Generation Architecture (TNGA), a system to make vehicle development faster and more efficient, in terms of capital expenditure, while creating more common parts. The new Corolla doesn't embody TNGA; Toyota models appearing in 2015 will be the first under TNGA, she said.

    VW has discussed openly how its engineers are using fewer and fewer architectures to develop vehicles of different sizes and across several different brands -- which helps drive down the cost of each vehicle. VW then can use the savings to push prices lower or to add premium content, thereby making its models more attractive.

    Yoshimi Inaba, executive chairman of Toyota Motor Sales USA and an adviser to Akio Toyoda, attended the Corolla event. He acknowledged that TNGA is underway and that it was "inspired" by VW, though its specific methods differ from VW's.

    No doubt Toyota's brain trust is looking forward to the day when savings culled from development of global vehicles such as Corolla -- 40 million sold so far -- can be applied to all kinds of new, costly technology and vehicle models. Not to mention spectacular vehicle introductions.

    Toyota is unquestionably a more excited company than it was in 2009. Whether customers find new Toyota models more exciting will shortly become evident.