The Tokyo Motor Show is one of the most important motor shows in the calendar, especially with Japan being the home land of some of the biggest carmakers, like Toyota, Subaru or Mitsubishi. And even though there are nine months left until the show starts (on October 23), Automotive News reports that the three Detroit carmakers, GM, Ford and Chrysler announced that they’ve decided to pull out of the show. The reason? Not hard to guess…to cut costs.
“At this time, participating in the show just isn’t a strategic priority,” Ford spokeswoman Jennifer Flake said. “Given everything else we have to balance in that region and in that market, that’s not where we’ve chosen to prioritize our time and our resources.”
“We won’t be participating,” said Rick Brown, president of GM Asia Pacific. “If you really look at the business conditions that we are in right now, where we really have to make a bang out of every buck we spend, it’s simply a business decision.” Two years ago, in 2007, exhibiting in Tokyo cost GM a whopping $2 million.
“Chrysler decided, under the current challenges and market situation the company faces, to pull out of TMS in 2009 in order to secure limited resources invested efficiently on activities necessary to sustain our business,” Kaori Beppu, spokesperson for Chrysler Japan, said in a written statement yesterday.
It looks like it’s gonna be a really strange year for motor shows, some of them being cancelled while others will be left without some major carmaker. A perfect example for this is the Detroit Motor Show, which is taking place these days, which had to start without Ferrari, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Infiniti.
Source: Automotive News
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