I knew something smelled like BS with this media storm over Toyota. Even with much larger recalls by GM/Ford I never saw this much energy by the media or govt agencies. You have Transporation Secretary LaHood saying “stop driving” which in turn tanks Toyota’s stock price. Later he comes out and says "oh sorry that was a misstatement. Hes always on TV acting tough on Toyota, the credit on the recall is all mine, but when you ask him about the recall itself all he says is “oh just turn the car off?” But hey hes acting tough!
BTW this isnt your typical recall, especially since govt has a vested interest in GM and Chrysler. They have a motive for Toyota bashing. Yet where is Ford in the bash-fest, they are no where to be found. Oh wait they aren’t govt/UAW owned. Also the lawsuits that are coming out of this has the trial lawyers licking their chops
Even then theres little “evidence” besides a few hundred anecdotal complaints out of 10s of millions of vehicles sold that there really is a problem. And the Cali incident where the four people were killed in the ES350, it was found the incorrect floormat was installed by the dealer in the vehicle. And even the previous driver of the loaner had the problem, notified the dealer, and still the dealer didn’t fix it. Dealership fail.
Considering the crap that has been going on in this Administration for the past year, I wouldnt be surprised if this is really true. Sorry kids, healthcare, unemployment, big bank bonuses were so 2009, the new villain on the block is Toyota. Pay no attention to the rising unemployment, continual Obama and Congress fails, falling Democratic approval ratings, $3.8 trillion budget, $1.6 trillion deficits. You might die in a Toyota! Don’t let a crisis go to waste.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2519112
The war on Toyota
FP Comment
Terence Corcoran, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, February 03, 2010
There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world’s greatest auto maker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesman such as U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of U.S. economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war.
The White House has denied any such motivation on the part of the United States. But that denial lacks credibility. While it may be technically true that President Obama’s team didn’t explicitly reach a decision to target Toyota, nobody in this crowd needs a presidential order to turn the Japanese auto giant’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) problem into a national industrial advantage for the United States. The owners of union-dominated Government Motors can spot a strategic economic opportunity without waiting for the memo from head office.
[b]California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.
Wednesday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood’s cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply “stop driving” their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing. If Toyota drivers are worried, they can take their vehicles to a dealer where, as Mr. LaHood knows, there was nothing the dealer could do since it is expected to take weeks if not months for Toyota to “fix” the alleged cause of Toyota’s alleged sudden acceleration problem.[/b]
Toyota shares continued their SUA plunge Wednesday, ending just below $74, down from recent highs of $92. The company has lost $23-billion in market capitalization since the crisis began.
At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem. The company is not helping matters with its apparent scrambling to come up with an explanation and a “fix” for a phenomenon that has been cropping up in auto industry lore for decades. No maker is immune, but Toyota is seems to have been caught in the latest run of reports. All of the reports are anecdotal accounts of out-of-control vehicles for reasons that nobody can ever adequately explain. The latest stories, including one of a Tennessee man who says his 2003 Camry suddenly jolted into a parking space, become instant media legends.
Of the millions of cars on the road, only a few hundred anecdotal reports exist, making it far more likely that other things are happening, including driver mistakes and even fluke occurrences that no amount of corporate fixing can avoid. Usually the stories fade and the auto companies move on, although Audi famously became victim of a SUA craze a couple of decades ago, losing massive market share even though no problem was ever identified beyond driver error.
Toyota’s experience looks like it could become even worse than Audi’s, mainly because bashing Toyota serves the national economic interest of the United States, U.S. auto makers, union leaders and others whose economic ideas tend toward nationalism. U.S. jobs for U.S. workers employed by U.S. companies.Is the media involved? The extent of exaggeration surrounding Toyota’s problem may be just a little larger than the usual media frenzy. In a typical over-the-top anti-Toyota item, famed author James B. Stewart Wednesday told Wall Street Journal readers to “avoid - or sell - Toyota Motor shares.” His reason is that Toyota may have misrepresented the cause of a now notorious crash of a Toyota Lexus ES-350 in San Diego last August. Toyota said the Lexus crash, in which four occupants were killed following a frantic 911 call, was due to a faulty floor mat.
The official accident report by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration makes clear that the floor mat is the likely culprit and Toyota may not quite be responsible. The mat in the Lexus was “not secured” properly, and it was also the wrong mat for that Lexus model. There also appeared to be no notable issues with the accelerator pedal itself.Another newspaper treatment of the Lexus event, in The New York Times, also treated the San Diego crash as a function of a Toyota acceleration problem that has more causes than a poorly-maintained and wrongly installed floor mat. So far, however, nobody has proven this to be true. Even less clear is how the fix Toyota has announced - involving a new part for the accelerator pedal - is even related to the problem. Was Toyota panicked into doing something - anything - when faced with a looming full-bore economic attack from the United States Economic Marines, with the media imbedded as part of the crusade?
