The Preposterous Side of This Week’s Toyota News
February 5th, 2010 Goto comments Leave a comment Even though we wrote what seemed a perfectly adequate speech for him, Akio Toyoda chose to fumble his way through a hastily called press conference this morning instead. We want to be on this guys side, but he is doing nothing more than providing fodder for comedians. As Bartel Schmitt of TTAC put it, he said basically nothing, other than offering a heartfelt apology for causing so much trouble to many of our customers.
Picture of The Preposterous Side of This Week’s Toyota News [source:cargurus.com]
So what is the company going to do? Why, theyre setting up a committee on quality control. I mean, Jay Leno would be hard pressed to come up with a better answer. To add to the farce, we heard straight faced Jim Lentz, Toyotas U.S. sales boss, serving up whoppers to NBCs Matt Laueramong them that the company first heard about unintended acceleration in October of last year.
It was a case of deep irony when the press finally picked up on Akioin Davos at the World Economic Forum when he should have been at home minding the storedriving off in an Audi in the midst of the recall crisis. Jon Stewart had fun with that and more, producing a classic send up in his Toyotathon of Death, which follows.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon Thurs 11p / 10c Toyotathon of Death www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show
One website announced that Toyota was recalling defective airbags to install new and improved ones. The company was taking these measures
so that in the event a gas pedal sticks on any of our vehicles, and if firm and steady application of the brakes and/or frantic waving of the arms fails to stop the vehicle, Toyotas improved airbags will reduce the amount of injuries or fatalities to Toyota owners.
Some auto writers ended up being funny in spite of themselves. Autoweeks Mark Vaughn got testy that many were just taking the Toyota business too seriously. Look people, there are 600 NHTSA recalls a year, almost two a day. Some are for serious safety defects, and here we are, making a total tsimmes over sticking gas pedals. Mark says its just too easy to blame plain old dumb driving on the manufacturer. There are dangers in most all cars, he says.
Mark, I hereby nominate you for the first CarGurus Head in the Sand Award for 2010.
Fortunes Alex Taylor wrote a thoughtful and critical piece about the historical/cultural problems plaguing Toyotas no show leadership. But claiming the excuse that its always been a company run by engineers, people who are uncomfortable with softer subjects especially in different cultures that arent easily understood through a root cause analysis, well, thats a cop out if I ever heard one.
Taylor senses a deep debate going on inside the company [on how to handle the recall]. Well, guys, the time for debate is over. Unless you want to see more jokes on late night TV and more plummeting sales.
Any other humorous aspects to the Toyota debacle that you have noted?[source:cargurus.com]
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