Toyota won’t raise prices on new 4Runner

DETROIT (Reuters) — Toyota Motor Corp. will not raise prices on the new version of its 4Runner SUV in a bid to shore up sputtering sales of the vehicle, dealers briefed on the plan this week said.
Toyota is due to unveil the all-new 4Runner at an event in Dallas next week.

The new SUV, which is manufactured at Toyota’s Tahara plant in Japan, is scheduled to go on sale in the United States in late October.

A Toyota spokesman declined to comment on the pricing of the new vehicle.

The 2009 model-year 4Runner has been Toyota’s worst-performing vehicle in U.S. sales at a time when industry-wide, sales have been in a slump.

Sales of the current version of the 4Runner, which has a starting sticker price of $28,640, have fallen 63 percent through August.

Toyota dealers who attended a meeting with senior Toyota management this week in Las Vegas were told that pricing on the 4Runner would be unchanged, two of the dealers told Reuters.

Typically automakers raise prices and add features to new vehicles.

But Toyota used its annual meeting of dealers to unveil a range of steps intended to reverse a recent decline in sales and take back market share, dealers at the meeting said.

Those included steps to make leasing more affordable because of higher resale values and the decision to hold the line on pricing for the new SUV, the dealers said.

The 4Runner is one of seven SUVs Toyota sells in the United States. Sales for that group of vehicles is down 26 percent through August. Only the relatively small Rav4 has shown growth among Toyota SUVs, up 1 percent.

Toyota’s overall sales are down 29 percent this year in the United States, the automaker’s largest single market.

Chrysler’s Press faces IRS lien, creditor suit

DETROIT — Jim Press, Chrysler Group’s outgoing deputy CEO, owes almost $1 million in back taxes and has been sued by his credit union for defaulting on a $609,000 loan, The Detroit News reported today.
The Internal Revenue Service has filed a tax lien for $947,409.63 on a house Press owns in Birmingham, Mich., north of Detroit. Press, who left Toyota in 2007 to join Chrysler as vice chairman and president, also has defaulted on a $609,286 loan from Western Federal Credit Union, the paper said. It filed a suit against him earlier this summer in Oakland County Circuit Court.

According to the newspaper, Press blamed his money woes on Chrysler‘s decision to end year-end bonuses for executives.

“I am not able to make the November and February payments due to the elimination of bonuses, which was just announced by my company,” Press wrote in a Nov. 11 letter to the credit union, asking for more time to make the payments. “My employment is not in jeopardy, and I still have monthly income to service the note as president and vice chairman of Chrysler LLC.”

Press said two banks had denied him credit.

“No comment,” Press said in an e-mail to Reuters. “Thank you for your interest.”

After he sent the letter, Chrysler entered Chapter 11 reorganization and then emerged June 10 as a new company controlled by Italian automaker Fiat S.p.A. Chrysler afterward scrapped most of its senior executive team, but new CEO Sergio Marchionne kept Press as an adviser.

Plans for Press to leave the company came out last month. He will leave by the end of the year.