No Wonder Toyota (TM) Is Near 52-Week Low?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 16, 12:36PM EDT

24/7 Wall St. wrote earlier that Toyota (TM) is trading near its 52-week low. Given the relative success of the big car company compared to rivals like GM (GM), the stock price level seems odd.

But, quality is critical to Toyota’s ability to sell cars and take market share from its competition. The news out today is that TM may be losing its crown.

According to CNN Money" "The Toyota brand has lost its top position for iron-clad reliability, according to an influential Consumer Reports survey released Tuesday. The survey dropped Toyota from first to fifth place – behind Honda, Acura, Scion and Subaru – in average vehicle reliability. The rankings are based on average predicted reliability for all models sold under a given brand."

At least the other winners are Japanese.

Only one American car, GM’s (GM) Buick, made it into the top ten. Ford (F) also showed improvement across most of its models. Unfortunately, the number of Buicks and Fords being sold is shrinking. Ford’s domestic sales dropped over 20% last month.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.