That was one of your best-crafted essays, Russ. And a valid parable for contemporary corporate maladies. Well done!
I can’t speak to the current Toyota product line, but I have a 2008 Tundra 4WD. It’s a beast that pulls everything I’ve ever asked of it, including a 24’ enclosed trailer carrying my helicopter, while shouldering a Lance camper in its bed, on the Interstate. I’m convinced that it’s so capable because it’s not lugging around the weight of one of the #@$%*! computer screens on its dash. (One of the benefits of being in the software-slinging business for sixty years, is knowing what NOT to computerize.)
But the dark-horse was my wife’s 2004 Toyota Matrix with fulltime AWD. She drove it for years until she needed a dedicated high-fuel-economy commuter car, so she picked out a Prius C that I literally cannot not fit into, but like glass slippers, was “just her size”. The Matrix’s trade-in value was paltry so I inherited it. The surprise was that if you folded its backseats down, you get a completely flat surface (with tiedown rings!) back to the full-size hatch. I can load 8’ 2x4’s (diagonally), engine cowlings, bags of cement, generators, and almost anything else that won’t bottom the springs. It has become my quarter-million mile “covered mini-pickup”, and my Tundra is left to do the serious heavy/awkward lifting. They will both probably outlast me.
There are likely a million reasons that Boeing, Toyota, et al. have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of success, but my money is on the “New Boss Doesn’t Like the Soup Until He Pisses in It Syndrome”, that infects so many global corporations.