But--but--why can't I get the color car I want? Whaddaya mean, 'the earthquake'?

[homasse]

As Japan shutdowns drag on, auto crisis worsens

The auto industry disruptions triggered by Japan's earthquake and tsunami will worsen in the coming weeks.

Car buyers will have difficulty finding the model they want in certain colors, thousands of auto plant workers will likely be told to stay home, and companies such as Toyota, Honda and others

Comments

[angry_chick]

Ohhh fuck.

The news just keeps getting worse and worse.

[homasse]

I do not even want to think about how badly this is going to hurt the Japanese economy.

I seriously hope Tepco goes under for all this--it was their piss poor planning (the tsunami walls will protect us! Put the emergency generators on low ground! Whaddaya mean, we're due for another massive earthquake and tsunami, since it's been a thousand years since the last one? Pfft, whatev, like one is reeeeeeaally gonna come this far inland again, ahahahaha~) and their "drop a 100-yen coin trying to pick up a 10-yen coin" way of handling the initial problems that are causing a lot of the ongoing problems now.

Rebuilding is happening amazingly quickly--a good number of the major highways are already back up and running--but the radiation fears are grinding a lot of it to a halt.

[ook]

Yup, I pointed this out to my mother on the Sunday after the quake. She'd been talking about getting a new car for the past four years and this finally pushed her to do it. She bought a new Honda just five days after the quake. And she got the color she wanted.

Another friend is going to be buying a new Honda next weekend.

[homasse]

Yeah, now is pretty much the time to do it--next month is when other parts of the world will start feeling the crunch from this.

[dearmisterecho]

Ugh, one of my students works at a car parts company as a maintenance repairman, and he said that they are losing like 2 million yen a DAY because of all this :( He says he doesn't think his job is in jeopardy, but he does look a bit worried every week :(

[hercurvestofear]

As a Toyota employee...FML. These past couple years have freaking sucked and its obviously not gonna get much better any time soon.

/later than hayl

[caterfree10]

I remember talking about this in my Japanese culture class not too long after the earthquake/tsunami struck. Considering how many Japanese companies deal in cars (and a myriad other businesses), I'm not one bit surprised at this.