You know how many newer cars have those little built-in sunglass holders near the rearview mirror? They can be a good way to gauge how the vehicle’s manufacturer feels about ‘perceived quality’, that imprecise term that basically means: how nice does a car seem to be made-and is a reflection on the priorities of the company that built it.

There was a time when aspiring Japanese brands like Toyota and Lexus went to amazing ends to create that feeling of quality.  But no longer.  Now that Toyota is the world’s largest car company, okay seems good enough.  Instead of a completely soft-lined finish to that sunglass holder, we now get a little piece of rubber material to protect your Foster Grants.  If that were the only cost cutting on display, I wouldn’t take issue.  But there’s more (or less, as it were): cheaper finishes everywhere, from mismatched door trim colors (with sharp edges of flash on the Camry’s door pulls) to hollow and scratch-prone console plastics in $80,000-plus LX570s.

And it’s not skin deep; making more money is the only justification for the Highlander forcing the driver to walk around to the passenger side to slide the middle row seat forward to let people into the back row—or for not making that 3^rd row split-fold.  So it should come as no surprise when relative upstarts like Hyundai start to tie or beat Toyota in JD Power rankings (the sunglass holder in a Veracruz is sumptuously finished), or that Lexus just lost its top spot for US market luxury car sales to both BMW and Mercedes.

Thankfully, the Japanese giant seems to have realized the error of its ways.  No longer consumed with chasing sales numbers at the expense of quality, it’s reinstalled the founder’s grandson at the helm, and put Yoshi Inaba, the man who lead the company’s charge up the charts in the late ‘90’s, back in charge here Stateside.

Just in time, too, if you ask me.  American consumers are incredibly savvy, and have a huge number of options to choose from.  Expecting them to overlook Toyota’s arrogance for long would have been a huge blunder.  It would have been a terrible shame if the company squandered a reputation for making the toughest cars and trucks in the world just to make a few more billions for a fiscal quarter or two.

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