Awake, and Driving

Brandweek, April 3, 2000 by Jeff Green

BW: Looking at your current sales volume, where are you headed?

PG: Our next goal is to break the 300,000-unit level and we're going to do that this year, we hope. We're now talking about 400,000 and we're putting plans together to get to that level within five years. Part of that is product plans, you have to be represented in key segments. We have a core product strategy where we are represented in the biggest markets. Based on our biggest strategy, we know that within five years we can take this company beyond 400,000.

But part of it is brand awareness. Do people know you? Do people trust you? How fast can you grow your company? How fast can you grow your brand? What is the limit? Well, we won't be 5 million. We just don't have that kind of product.

BW: What is your opinion on strategic alliances, especially with Mitsubishi in the news as a possible partner with DaimlerChrysler [a deal that came to fruition last week]?

PG: They bode very well for us in terms of leveraging a larger supplier base and looking at some really interesting products as we go forward (to help us grow).

BW: Where will the growth come?

PG: Trucks, trucks, trucks and more trucks! We need to get into the truck business because we think very shortly more than 50% of the market will be trucks. We have a great SUV heritage so we're going to capitalize on that. We're going to try to get into the mini-SUV area. But we also have to find a way to have more of these truck-like products. A lot of momentum is going into crossover vehicles and four-door pickups. If we want to be beyond 400,000, we'll have to be in those areas. So many neat things you can do with the new platform technology. New Montero, drives like a car but it's a truck. It meets a lot more needs than the previous generations.

If I look at the success of Honda/Toyota--because I really do admire what they've done--they started off as a 300,000-, 200,000-unit company and worked their way up to over 1 million over time. We're going to take it one step at a time. We're going to cross 300,000 a year and then be looking at 400,000. After that we starting thinking about 500,000. We think we can get that level over the next 10 years.