Toyota

[ewill3rd]

Okay, so where is the outrage?
Where is the freaking out, the complaining, the whining?

All the tree hugging, gas mileage bragging, hybrid loving freaks won't say a thing about their beloved Toyota who's cars are so dangerous they had to stop sale of 3/4 of the fleet they manufacture and stop assembly lines all over the place.

GM has a recall on 20 cars for a change in design and the news is totally outraged, the public is driven into a panic, and people are demanding their cars get fixed before the parts are even available.

These Toyotas are actually killing people and it is so dangerous that they can't even sell them anymore and all I hear are the crickets chirping.

Seems fair I guess.... NOT!

The only thing people have to say is "They are going the extra mile to ensure the safety of consumers".

Okay... rant off.

[CIWS]

They're taking it up the pooper with this one. Just wait till Q2 sales figures come out.

I wonder if their pre-owned lots have also halted sales of the affected models ?

[submariner409]

Is it because Toyota and Obama have better advertising campaigns ??? Keep at it long enough and people start to believe................

[RightTurn]

Now Bill...you know we aren't allowed to criticize teh grate Japanese auto companies. All I can say is ... "YAY." And, "May the BEST CAR WIN!"

[ewill3rd]

Sub, as with many things just because you say something doesn't make it so.
I see more proof of the falsehoods in both of those things every day.


Amen RT... AMEN!!!

[orconn]

It was always interesting to me that Nader and the public were able to doom the Corvair, all the while the Volkswagen Beetle, which suffered from even worse rear weight bias handling continuued to find ever increasing market acceptance for their often deadly cars. But VW's were the darlings of the rising "intelligentsia" who were apparently willing to put up with involuntary rear end swaps brought on by the engine being in the rear and the fact that the "independent" rear suspension lost 75% of it's grip when the wheels tucked in when the rear end started to come around. But, hey, Volkswagens were cheap to own and cheap to run and everyone know had "superior German engineering."

Let's face it Toyota's big contribution to the automotive scene has also been relatively inexpensive and reliable transportation. It is also interesting to note that the only plants shut down have been those located in the U.S. The Japanese plants continue in operation as do other facilities around the world.

[RightTurn]

Heh, heh... and it gets better. Today they announced the RECALL of another 1.09M vehicles.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/...or_mats_recall

TOKYO – Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it will recall an additional 1.09 million vehicles in the United States over problems with gas pedals and floor mats — a fresh blow to the world's top automaker as it struggles to salvage its safety reputation.

The new recall would affect five models — 2008-2010 Highlander, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Venza, 2009-2010 Matrix, and 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe, Toyota said.

The announcement came just a day after Toyota said it would suspend U.S. sales of eight models — including the Camry, America's top-selling car — to fix faulty gas pedals that could stick and cause acceleration without warning.

Last week, Toyota issued a recall for the same eight models, affecting 2.3 million vehicles. In late 2009, Toyota recalled 4.2 million vehicles over concerns that floor mats could bend across gas pedals, causing sudden acceleration.

[ewill3rd]

7.6 MILLION cars recalled for safety reasons... and who knows about it?

[gdwriter]

The story about that out-of-control Lexus that killed all four passengers in San Diego was pretty harrowing.

For all the claims about how liberal NPR is, I heard two stories on the Toyota recall, one on Morning Edition and another on All Things Considered last night.

Toyota is justifiably taking it in the shorts this time. Their once vaunted reputation for quality and reliability — which used to be justified — just doesn't hold up anymore. It always pissed me off how those coneheads at Consumer Reports would recommend Toyotas without collecting any reliability data like they did for every other manufacturer. What B.S. But even those extremely biased dunderheads have woken up.

I agree with others here that if GM, Ford or Chrysler had a dangerous defect like this on their cars, people would be screaming bloody murder. Why isn't Ralph Nader on TV throwing a hissy fit?

I agree with Peter De Lorenzo at AutoExtremist that Toyota is in big trouble:

In Toyota’s case, their relentless obsession to be the biggest, baddest car company on the planet has cost them dearly. Too many plants were built, which led to the company having too much capacity on hand, and in the process of doing that they took their collective eyes off of the ball, which led to an undeniable slip in quality, heretofore their Holy Grail, and the principle raison d’etre for the company. And remember, all of this was undertaken in the quest to unseat General Motors as the world’s biggest automaker. Sounds wildly misguided and painfully irrelevant right about now, doesn’t it?


But there’s more to Toyota’s slide than the above-mentioned laundry list of reasons. The fact of the matter is that the company that thrived on being the quiet but strong and formidable No. 2 absolutely sucks at being No. 1. They’re so bad at it in fact that they’ve completely lost their mojo.
In the old days Toyota could get by with their blandtastic transportation devices because they smugly knew that their customers would go along to get along with that style of detached motoring, because their customers also knew that nothing went wrong with their vehicles, ever. And that was plenty good enough.


Now in the midst of a relentless series of recalls, that ol’ Toyota quality magic has been blown to smithereens, and their reputation is in tatters. And amazingly enough consumers have quickly gotten the message that there are other automakers out there delivering the kind of quality numbers that used to be exclusively associated with Toyota.

Do they make bland vehicles? Absolutely. And that didn’t used to be a problem. But in today’s cutthroat market it is a huge problem for Toyota because to the consumer if the quality is comparable, then all things being equal they will naturally gravitate toward style and appealing design, and Toyota is nowhere when it comes to those factors. As in not even close.

Toyota is still going to sell a lot of cars. There are still plenty of sheep out there for whom a car is simply an appliance. But they are no longer invincible.

That said, GM's announcement of interest-free loans and other incentives to Toyota owners strikes me as a bit tacky and opportunistic. It takes some balls to make such a bold offer, so I'll give GM a few points.

If this were a reliability problem, like the oil sludge problem with Toyota engines that they tried to sweep under the rug, I'd say go after them, no holds barred. But since this is a safety issue, I think it could make GM look like vultures.

[Night Wolf]

All of this over the chance of a floor mat getting in the way of the accelerator?

[RightTurn]

Faulty gas pedals. Last time it was teh killer floormats.

[The Tony Show]

Faulty pedals, loose floormats, pushbutton start that requires far too long a press to turn off, faulty programming on the electronic throttle that causes surging.....there's more than one problem at play here.

Toyota has a long and checkered history of covering up issues that would make them look bad, from 3.5 million vehicles affected by engine sludge, trucks whose frames rot away to nothing, and even forcing attorneys to conceal evidence about sub-par roof crush performance when people sued over deaths.

Hopefully this wakes people up to the fact that Toyota is far from the paragon of quality that everyone thinks.

[Jesda]

Sucks for the people who were killed/injured. :/

[gdwriter]

Hopefully this wakes people up to the fact that Toyota is far from the paragon of quality that everyone thinks.

Of all the cars I've owned, my Toyota was the least reliable.

In all honesty, I think that's partially because manufacturing methods and components have improved since the 70s. My Toyota was a '74 Celica that had ~60,000 miles on it when I bought it in December, 1982. I put 60,000 miles on the car in the six years I owned it.

As it approached 100,000 miles in the summer of 1986, it seemed like something broke down every week. One time, after pushing it the last few yards to the dealership during morning traffic on one of the busiest streets in San Angelo, I slammed the door so hard the glass shattered. I called my Dad up and asked him to go to the junkyard and get a driver's side door window and don't ask any questions.

On the other hand, when considering old cars, Betty is very reliable. She started running badly at ~126,000 miles in the summer of 2000, which turned out to be a burnt-out valve. But I decided if I had to repair that anyway, it made sense to rebuild the engine. She's at 182,000 now and I've had no trouble with the engine; the biggest reliability issues I've had have been the a coil failure and a starter solenoid that gets too hot in the summer.

GM used to have a strong reputation for quality and reliability, which they squandered in the 70s and 80s. Even now, with GM quality on par or better, with many consumers won't even consider GM. I wonder if continued quality snafus at Toyota will have the same results.

[77CDV]

Don't bet on it, Gary. All the sheeple know is St. Toyota makes the Pius and is good for the Earth. And I also find it interesting that none of the usual suspects from the consumer rabidvocate groups are beating the war drums over this. Ralphie "Unsafe at any speed" Nader too busy planning another presidential run? Joan Claybrook having her hair done today? Clarence Ditlow have laryngitis?

Well, Toyota wanted to be #1 with a bullet. Looks like they got it, and everything that goes with it. Guess they should've been more careful what they wished for.