Secretive Culture Led Toyota Astray

They hid a problem that was killing people. That is why they are now getting negative publicity.

The failure is not the recall -- that happens. The failure is that they knew about the problem and lied about it.

First, Ford didn't take any government money and actually reported a profit for the past year.

Second, there's a difference between a subsidy and loans. GM and Chrysler got loans. Now, they were loans they couldn't have gotten on the open market because they looked too toxic. However, GM is now saying they'll be able to repay the loan pretty quickly. That indicates that investors misjudged the risk. Granted, it could have turned out otherwise (and I was one of the people that thought that it would have).

And I think that people feel betrayed if a company has a potentially fatal flaw in their devices. This isn't an issue of mere reliability. If my car is unreliable, it's annoying and I have higher repair bills. If my car speeds up to 100MPH and I can't stop it, I can die. Those two things sit differently with consumers. And it looks like Toyota tried to write it off as nothing when it was something and tried to protect their image rather than their customers lives.

It's one of those things: if a company has produced a wonderful, superior, reliable vehicle that kills 1 in 100,000, are they better? Most would say no, but it's easier to hide and it looks like Toyota was trying to hide their problems.

Toyota isn't failed, but this will be a huge setback for them (and it should be). If you hide problems that are fatal to people, you deserve to have your sales drop. There's an outrage over that.

Toyota screwed up big time for many years. The US auto makers also screwed up for many years. The US auto makers troubles came to light slowly in a way that was mostly about finances, wages, etc. Toyota's screw up is about human fatalities and came to light very quickly. That's a lot of the difference in the way it's being treated by the media.

I'm having trouble tracking down a citation, but Marketplace pointed out that this is the first of these recalls to happen since the burgeoning of social networking. Pintos got written up in newspaper headlines. The SUV/Firestone debacle probably got snarky bylines on Fark. The Toyota "crisis" happened in the full bloom of Twitter et all. The commonality of foreign cars means that Bob can post to Facebook to warn any and all of his friends that they should check their driveway for any of the recalled models.

Furthermore there's an angle on the story: Toyota's reputation is build on reliability. I can't speak for the Pinto, but I don't recall Ford's SUV having that reputation. With sentiments currently against big business, suggestions of deceit are juicy linkbait.

Beyond that, some speak of Toyota's timeliness in issuing an apology. The Asashi, 2nd leading Japanese national newspaper, accuses them of apologizing too late. I personally wouldn't know how much weight that holds, but I find it interesting.

All cars have "bugs" that could result in the death of the operator. It just depends on what the probability of death is (and how traceable it would be).

Car companies' risk management departments decide to do a recall when the cost of doing one is cheaper than not doing one. End of story.

I'll go along with it as long as you can't retrieve the data without a subpoena (which I assume is easy to acquire during an accident investigation, but much more difficult to acquire "by asking").

Would you buy a Toyota today? I would. Do you really think that the NHTSA might not be doing this partly as a handout to the government's own auto companies (Chrysler and GM)?

I've worked in an automotives parts plant, and let me tell you right now: be afraid, be very afraid.

Well okay, that's overly dramatic, but your expectation of cars being built like planes is just not happening, nor is it likely to ever happen.

The fact of the matter is, car prices are something that is constantly under intense consumer and competitive pressure. Every auto maker wants to make their cars cheaper and cheaper, and at the end of the day something has to give for the prices consumers demand... this includes redundancy and QA.

In the short time I was in the industry, I was involved in multiple recalls - none of which as deadly as Toyota's here, but all of which were the direct result of cost cutting. In two of those recalls, the blame lied solely on using cheaper, brittle plastic parts as a cost-cutting measure applied by the major automakers. Not that they're pocketing the savings of course, those generally get passed straight onto you, the consumer.

Shortly after I left the industry Toyota unveiled the Camry redesign - and I remember remarking that something bad had to happen with this car. It gave way too much bang for your buck, I cannot imagine the invisible corners that were cut to bring this vehicle to market. Now I suppose we know - and the age-old mantra still rings true: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Keep that in mind when you buy your next car, seriously. The plant where I worked made parts for everything from cheapo Pontiacs to expensive Mercedes - and let me tell you, you do get what you pay for. Disregard ignorant laymen who insist that the expensive marques are nothing but branding, there is a very, very real difference in what you're getting (and that includes tolerances, redundancy, and testing level).