Finally, some perspective to the Toyota drama

Well, here's a story that helps puts all this nonsense into a better focus:

Relatively few complain about Toyota- Yahoo! Autos Article Page

Despite the media feeding frenzy, it appears that Toyota overall is still a good company to deal with.

No question, Toyota remains a very good company and I will continue to purchase their vehicles, however I am not happy with the way they responded to this entire acceleration problem. Hopefully they have learned from this and will respond differently in the future. I still remember the Ford Pinto and the exploding gas tank and I would never even consider buying a Ford because of their corporate mentality.

I do not think it is fair to compare the ford of the Pinto era with the Ford of today. They were the only US company not to go to the congressional feeding trough, so that is a plus for me.

Besides, Ford was the only US automaker to embrace Hybrid technology.

Given all that, Toyota hopefully has learned from this, and will make the required adjustments. Base on their recent responses, it appears that they have indeed gotten the message.

Could Toyota's problems be due to overworked employees?

Toyota undone by Japan's work ethic? | Jenny Holt | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

oh oh VW TDI owners are not gonna hear they the 4th WORST...

i cant say that Toyota has done a great job in handling this recall, but at the same time when compared to previous major recalls by auto manufacturers, this was by far, one of the quickest.

we also had Ford with spontaneous combustion cars (due to a faulty carburetor maybe?? not sure if they EVER admitted fault) GM and Chevy with poorly designed clutch systems that required an entire replacement every 2-3 years. (they eventually provided a shield of sorts that prevented fluid from being deposited on clutch plate)

so, Toyota may not have done a great job, but it does appear that they still did much better than the industry average

It is funny at work to see the difference in opinion on Toyota between people that actually own Toyota's that are involved with the recall and those that do not own a Toyota. At an engineering meeting today a couple got to joking about comparing Toyota's troubles to a piece of equipment that we are looking at. When I asked them what they knew about the Toyota recalls, the same response, "only what I have read and seen on the news".

Once I explain what the recalls are based on, especially the Prius brake recall, they seem to change their opinions quickly and agree with the media frenzy statement.

The current owners are not concerned and plan to take their cars in for the recalls at the next oil change. All say that they will buy Toyota again, they expect Toyota to fix their problems and six months from now this will be old news.

I raise my eyebrows a bit at some of this...

My husband works at a company that has multiple contracts with Toyota and their affiliates. They make systems to manage parts production, the flow of components and raw materials, and to track dealer consumption. He has been all over the place working with tons of different Toyota affiliate factories, warehouses, etc - even down to very small ones. I say "affiliate" because of the way Toyota gets it`s parts - most are produced by area companies instead of being made at an actual Toyota factory.

And according to him, Toyota affiliate factories are really some of the best places to work. They have policies in place to send you home at 5 or 6 - overtime is limited and lights go off so no one can hang around, etc. The Japanese government outlawed unpaid overtime quite a long time ago, and if possible no company wants to pay the extra for employees working long hours so they send them home. It was big news when the Prius production was in full swing and they opened an extra line and sent out the ok for overtime to make necessary parts.

The author mentions her husband - but I am going to make a guess that he did not work anywhere with any connection to Toyota. She also lives in Tokyo which is far from Toyota, so makes that all the more likely...
There are some awful companies out there with overwork policies, skirting the law for overtime - but Toyota is not one of them. Break their work agreement, and you lose the valuable contract.

Yeah, I thought "a bunch of hysterics"!!! Until this morning, when I did some research based on the LA Times article about the Colorado family whose Prius crashed.

The fact that Toyota accepts any percentage of cars accelerating beyond control makes me sick. And for the first time in my proud ownership of a Prius, I DON'T like the fact that I drive one.

My car DOES experience a loss of breaking ability when driving over uneven terrain. I do that so seldom that it never really occurred to me something more serious could be present.

But if the problem is electronic, a computer-based problem, then, well, I don't know... Sure as hell isn't a "sticky accelerator" or a freaking floor mat. Shame on Toyota for not taking this more seriously years ago. And for the first time, I'm considering NOT driving another Prius in my lifetime...