Toyotathon of Death

this is not really “Japan-bashing” beczuse most people
know it only afffect US-made Toyotas.

sadly, there’s also a bit of USA-bashing on Japanese
websites and blogs. they apparently thing that it’s
the imcompetent American workers and American management
at Toyota’s US factory in Kentucky who are useless.

I have owned several US, Japanese, and Euroopean cars,
including Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Buick(don’t laugh),
Toyota, Citroen(again, don’t laugh), Saab, Volvo,
Ford, Pontiac(I said don’t laugh!!!), and Mini. Almost
all of the have had a recall or two during the time I
owned them. The manufacturers usually just sent me a
notice and the dealer repaired/replaced the affected
item. Nothing more to it… There are thousands of
small and big parts on any car.

The reason that the Toyota recall has snowballed into
a publicity nightmare is because Toyota vehicles are
just too darn popular. This means there are millions
of cars affected, making it too juicy a news story for
the media to pass up. It also didn’t help that Toyota
has also been known for its quality and reliability.
If an A-student suddenly flunks a test, everybody takes
notice. (nobody even blinks when a C-student drops
out of school)

The fact that the Japanese government is looking into the claim that the Prius model’s means that there is a problem out there that has to be solved. Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that the DPJ are strongly supported by Toyota group companies, and that the DPJ are at odds with the Japanese bureaucracy. So it would be useful to know who pushed for an investigation on the Japan side of things. As far as the sudden spurt in complaints, to me this is strange. It’s as if the car was fine until many people in Japan heard there might be something wrong, and suddenly, voila, they all found something. Just like a few years ago, people were suddenly all scarred of gyoza.

The US side is even more complicated than the Japan side, because is not the US government now basically managing GM. Has not the US government now spent a tremendous amount of money bailing out the big three? This is unfortunate because no matter how guilty Toyota might be of something, it surly calls up to mind a conflict of interest. The US DOT secretary Ray LaHood at one point actually told people to stop driving Toyotas! He’s enjoying this way too much. Of course, if you check opensecret.com and look at his campaigns one sees that transportation unions have always donated to his campaigns when he ran for office (in Illinois), and while I’m not sure as to their source, according to worldchanging.com, he “maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate.” How typical.

There are nearly 40,000 traffic deaths every year in the US. All car manufactures face unexpected problems with their cars at times. Can anyone site the number of *confirmed* cases of people actually having died from auto accidents related to the current problems with Toyota cars? Of course if it even might have been because of the way the car is manufactured, Toyota needs to fix the problem ASAP. But the reaction seems unreasonable to me and over the top.

Of course there’s nothing for Toyota to do but to apologize and fix the problem. If they were to even hint at the politics behind the issue all it would do was create more mistrust. The cars do need to be fixed after all. But again, the whole thing seems to have been blown up far out of proportion to what was necessary.

Toyota will inevitably survive and grow stronger as a result of this experience. I can’t say the same for the big three, which now seem so reliant on the US government for help.