Norihiko Shirouzu & John Murphy:

Toyota Motor Corp.’s incoming president, Akio Toyoda, has a sobering message for the giant company founded by his grandfather: It has gotten too fancy for its own good.



On Monday, three top executives who helped lead Toyota the past four years — including Mitsuo Kinoshita, one of the primary architects of the company’s global expansion — announced their retirement. The departures clear the way for Mr. Toyoda’s planned makeover of the world’s biggest auto maker.



He is expected to focus, most of all, on abandoning kakushin, or “revolutionary change,” current president Katsuaki Watanabe’s term for changing the way Toyota designed its cars and factories. It spawned technological advances, but led to cars that were often costlier to produce.



The 52-year-old Mr. Toyoda is also working to fix a pricing strategy that put the company at odds with some U.S. dealers, who felt its cars were getting too expensive, according to people familiar with the situation.