Toyota South Africa’s founder was an unlikely motor mogul. Reg Rumney reviews a new book about the company he founded
THE real truth behind the management philosophy that spurred the Japanese economic miracle is “the last fart of the ferret”, according to the man who started it all.
This fascinating fact is disclosed in a new book on Toyota South Africa and founder Albert Wessels, Never Say Goodbye, by Harvey Thomas. Market leader Toyota, the only listed South African motor manufacturer, blossomed from the first importation of 10 Toyotpet Stout bakkies in 1961 to the production at its Prospecton factory of around 100 000 vehicles a year.
The title of the book, which is written in a lively, anecdotal style, comes from one of the quaint habits of the late Wessels, often referred to in that old-fashioned habit of Afrikaans business of using honorary titles, as “Doctor’. He never said goodbye at the end of a phone conversation.
The Japanese partners who started in business with Wessels never said goodbye either, all through the years of intensifying sanctions and pressure on Japan to do business with South Africa.
The Japanese principles which led Toyota to being world-class naturally spilt over to the South African product, though the book demonstrates that Toyota South Africa faced a fairly rocky road in its early years as the Japanese vehicles overcame initial scepticism.
The man who invented the now-famous Kanban production system, using just-in-time and flexible manufacturing techniques at Toyota Japan, was the aptly named Taiichi Ohno.
In a BBC interview quoted in the book, Ohno summed up the essence of the system he came up with: “In Japan we have a saying, `the last fart of the ferret’. When a ferret is cornered by another animal and thinks it’s about to die, it lets out a terrible smell to repel its adversary and escape. It’s just the same with humans. If you put men under so much pressure that they feel like they might die, they come up with all kinds of ingenuity.”
The Toyota South Africa success story could also be ascribed to the counterpart of the Japanese spur to ingenuity: the boer maak `n plan mentality of the frontiersman and a certain rugged individualism. It certainly depended on the chutzpah of founder Wessels — an unlikely motor mogul who, Thomas says, was such a bad driver he parked his Rolls by sound and who finessed experience in banking and clothing into a Toyota agency in the early 1960s.
Speaking to a Toyota executive in Japan, Wessels admitted he had no knowledge of marketing motor vehicles and no experience of the industry, but said he was confident of getting a permit to import motor vehicles.
Asked how he could be so sure, Wessels replied: “Mr Dobashi, I belong to the South African establishment that makes up the government of the country. The government is interested in greater participation of the establishment in trade and industry. I am confident, therefore, that I will get a permit.”
“Fortunately,” writes Thomas, “Dobashi spoke good English but he never revealed what he understood by the term `establishment’. Later Wessels admitted that he too was a little fuzzy about its exact meaning. But none of this mattered. It was a magic word which undoubtedly impressed Dobashi.”
Those close ties to Afrikaner establishment, and where Wessels’ rise to fame and fortune fits into the story of Afrikaner economic empowerment, are not sufficiently explored. Thomas suggests Wessels got the government to change its mind about introducing yet another manufacturer into South Africa’s overcrowded motor vehicle market purely by pushiness. Might not politics have played some part?
Nonetheless, the book does show that if politics played a part, it is not sufficient to ensure success.
Wessels himself ascribed the success of Toyota to its “family values”. And it is a family business: when Wessels senior died in office in 1991, his son Bert had already been brought up in the family business and easily took over his father’s position as executive chairman. Daughter Elizabeth Bradley is vice-chair.
It has been remarked that most books describing business success follow the same pattern: early optimistic beginnings, a business disaster, and then ever-increasing accomplishment. Several pointers come through strongly in this book.
While Wessels senior’s success with Toyota seemed to bear out his seemingly unbridled ambition and broad vision, not all of his early ventures succeeded. One landed him with a mountain of debt that took him two years to pay off out of his own pocket, a business lesson he never forgot.
Wessels also credited Toyota Japan for the success of Toyota South Africa. The Japanese side may have delivered the total commitment to quality, but the South African success story provides some other morals.
Toyota and its founder have always placed a great emphasis on rewarding loyalty, and in the volatile world of advertising it has not changed agency through the years.
The emphasis on marketing has been Toyota’s real strength. It probably started with the then- surprising appointment as MD in 1972 of Colin Adcock, who left his job as MD of ad agency Lindsay Smithers to join the company. Legacy of Adcock’s marketing genius is the “Everything keeps going right, Toyota” jingle.
Following in his footsteps is whizzkid Toyota Marketing MD Brand Pretorius, who has made it a market-driven company.
The number one question now is whether Toyota will continue to hold top spot through the transition? The company has changed since the admittedly paternalistic Wessels senior died, and has a progressive and impressive social-investment programme.
Unlike some other manufacturers, it is a South African company, not a subsidiary of a foreign company. It would seem to be more determined, therefore, to ride out the storms of changing local-content programmes and decreasing tariff protection that have always threatened to thin out further the number of motor manufacturers operating in this still crowded market.