For several years, Toyota slowly assembled a massive global marketing strategy around the 2020 Summer Olympics to be held in Tokyo before COVID-19 blew up both the event and the automaker’s plans.
The “Toyota Olympics” — the only half-joking unofficial moniker for the Tokyo games — have been delayed, for now, until 2021. The delay will give Toyota engineers more time to perfect the fleet of futuristic autonomous vehicles the automaker had planned to showcase to the world from its backyard. But it also means the long locked-in marketing theme for the second half of 2020 has lost its anchor, and its reason for being.
Toyota’s adjustments in North America to the COVID-19 threat have been varied but broad. It suspended production at its 14 assembly and component plants in March and plans to begin a very slow restart Monday, May 11. Construction at its 15th plant — a joint operation with Mazda in Huntsville, Ala. — was delayed by the virus, and a document obtained by Automotive News suggested the delay would push back the planned 2021 launch of the plant’s compact crossovers for at least five and a half months.
Like other automakers, Toyota transitioned some of its workers to making personal protective equipment for medical personnel and first responders, and later for its own employees to facilitate the company’s return to production. It also offered its manufacturing expertise to makers of much-needed medical equipment and supplies to help those companies operate more efficiently and boost their output.
Toyota Motor North America’s 47,500 employees have made some sacrifices as the automaker has sought to save cash during the crisis, though no permanent employees were furloughed. White-collar Toyota employees were told that their bonuses and merit increases would be delayed, with no retroactivity, while hourly workers were asked to use one day of personal time off — usually reserved for vacations or sick time — per week while their factories were closed.