Toyota: Moving Forward – ‘Cause the Pedal’s Stuck

Propaganda that obviously is NOT going to help Toyota on the road to recovery.

So, here is some background on the 2009/2010 recalls and the ways, not always good ways, Toyota has tried to stay afloat.

FIRST:

September 2009 – Toyota sent out a recall on almost four million cars because of a possible accelerator interference by the floormat.

October 2009 – The Los Angeles Times prints its first article about the recall. This would soon become a series of stories closely followed by the American public. One article in December 2009 claimed that Toyota knew about the defects early on, but were hoping that they could blame it on user error, and not on the vehicles themselves.

TOYOTA’S RESPONSE:

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December 23, 2009 by Irv Miller

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Today the Los Angeles Times published an article that wrongly and unfairly attacks Toyota’s integrity and reputation.

While outraged by the Times’ attack, we were not totally surprised. The tone of the article was foreshadowed by the phrasing of a lengthy list of detailed questions that the Times emailed to us recently. The questions were couched in accusatory terms.

Despite the tone, we answered each of the many questions and sent them to the Times. Needless to say, we were disappointed by the article that appeared today, and in particular by the fact that so little of our response to the questions appeared in the article and much of what was used was distorted.

Toyota has a well-earned reputation for integrity and we will vigorously defend it.

Irv Miller
Group Vice President, Environmental & Public Affairs
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

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MY THOUGHTS: Here is where Toyota first went wrong. Instead of getting offended and defensive against the Times’ accusations, it would have been smart to own up to the delay. There are many reasonable explanations to delay a recall on millions of vehicles. To do so would inconvenience those millions of vehicles’ owners, and would cost billions of dollars. It is therefore smart for a company to make sure that the cause of the accidents are in fact the fault of the product and not something else before turning their company upside down.

Instead, Toyota took the “how dare you route,” which never goes over well.

Needless to say the bad press has continued, and the company has not done much better at responding to the criticism.