Toyota Pulls Out of Formula One

The economic crisis has hurt everyone - particularly General Motors and Chrysler of course, but a close third would have to be Toyota.

The company has seen sales fall sharply, making once-huge profits turn into deep losses. Toyota's leadership has seen that some of the problems go deeper than that though.

Products like the Toyota FT-86 and Lexus LFA are supposed to rectify the enthusiasm gap. Now, Toyota has made the official announcement that the company will be pulling out of Formula One.

Signaling its intention of bigger and better things, Toyota has made an effort to get involved in motorsports. That included F1 and more recently, NASCAR, neither which have fared particularly well.

Seven years and a rumored price tag of over $2 billion later, the company is pulling out, without a single victory to show for the money spent. It's a humiliating defeat and loss of prestige for Toyota. It's enough to make somebody cry - in this case, literally as Toyota's Company President Akio Toyoda did in public about the whole ordeal.

"This was a difficult but ultimately unavoidable decision," he said at a Tokyo press conference. "Since last year with the worsening economic climate, we have been struggling with the question of whether to continue in F1.....we are pulling out of Formula One completely. I offer my deepest apologies to Toyota's many fans for not being able to achieve the results we had targeted."

Toyota's departure leaves no Japanese representation in the series after Honda and Bridgestone have already left. I don't think any one of them will be reentering anytime soon - it is a costly endeavor.