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Buy a Toyota GT86 and your wife will hate you

Marketing can be a very strange business. Convincing a man or woman (or child, really) that they absolutely cannot live without the latest, greatest new bit of technology oftentimes takes a unique approach. In the "online film promoting the Toyota GT86" you'll see below, created by agency Happiness Brussels, men are reverse-psychologied into thinking a new sports coupe will make them more masculine by getting their loved ones to hate them. Or something like that. We think.
In any case, we suggest you watch the video below to see how much fun men can have with a GT86 - or Scion FR-S or Subaru BRZ, presumably - at the expense of their significant others. Fair warning: There's a potential Not Safe For Work moment in the ad: beware of a brief male butt shot about 44 seconds in.
Marketing. Gotta love it. Unless you're married to a man. Or something like that. We think. Whatever, just watch.

Toyota, Mazda drop Takata as Mitsubishi, Subaru weigh options

It's not a very good time to be Takata right now. Fresh on the heels of longtime partner Honda ditching them, Toyota and Mazda have both come out and said they will not use the company's airbag inflators if they continue to rely on ammonium nitrate. Bloomberg reports that Subaru and Mitsubishi are also contemplating a divorce. "The inflator using ammonium nitrate produced by Takata will not be adopted by Toyota," President Akio Toyoda said during a briefing today. "What's most important above anything else is the safety and peace of mind of customers." Mazda echoed that position, simply saying it "will not use Takata airbag inflators which contain ammonium nitrate in our new cars." When you lose three huge OEM accounts in as many days, it's certainly going to have a deleterious effect on your fortunes. In Takata's case, that's meant a staggering 39-percent drop in their share price over the last three days. Yesterday alone, the company saw a 6.2-percent fall, Bloomberg reports. As the business publication reports, though, Takata isn't going down without a fight. The company is "considering some plans to survive," including a fundraising plan that will see it potentially offer up additional shares for sale. Still, at least one analyst doesn't see whatever company survives staying involved in the airbag inflator business. "I really don't see how they're going to be able to survive as an inflator manufacturer," Valient Market Research founder Scott Upham told Bloomberg. "When your major clients publicly come out and say that they're not going to use your products anymore, it makes this very difficult to sustain your business." News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Carlos Osorio / AP Honda Mazda Mitsubishi Subaru Toyota Safety supplier

Toyota offering $4.2 billion in stock to fund Mirai, new hybrids

Toyota president Akio Toyoda told a group of investors that the hydrogen fuel-cell Mirai is the car for the next century. To help pay for it, Toyota is courting investors who aren't only after short-term capital gains but want to help the company long term. It will offer up to 500 billion yen ($4.2 billion US) worth of special shares in Japan that cost 20-percent more than common stock and that can't be sold for five years. The upshot is that the shares will pay a higher dividend, still have voting rights, and they can be converted to common stock or sold back to Toyota at the issue price. The investors won't lose money. Called "Model AA" shares in honor of the company's first passenger car, the sale would help Toyota hold onto capital while it works on the next - expensive - developments. The sale would be broken up into tranches, with 50 million potentially on offer this year after the annual shareholder's meeting. Successive sales would take place no more than once a year. The initial dividend is set at 0.5 percent and capped at 2.5 percent, which even at its lowest rate would beat that of a standard deposit account in a Japanese bank. At the moment, sales are only planned for Japan. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2016 Toyota Mirai: LA 2014 View 19 Photos News Source: Bloomberg Earnings/Financials Green Toyota Hydrogen Cars Sedan toyota mirai stocks investing