Bloomberg: Regulators Hired by Toyota Helped Halt Investigations

that is one way to look at it. i take it to mean that many consumers have unrealistic expectations and also take any chance they can to blame it on the equipment rather than accept that they drove carelessly

 

This isn't a jab at your comment, but rather to demonstrate how run-away publicity and opinion make some cars get fixed when they don't need it, and others to go on lacking needed attention via recall.

I had the opportunity to read some of the Pinto criminal trial documents -- incuding closing arguments and the opinion, which was in Ford's favor.

By way of background, the poster-child for it was, if I remember correctly, a rather old Pinto with a 2-by-6 instead of a rear bumper, and a rag stuffed in the filler nozzle instead of a gas cap.

The judge found the true data compelling. One example was that, of cars in its size class, and all those of smaller cars, the Pinto had the fewest accident-ralated fires when data were shown as incidents per hundred vehicles. Yes, Pinto had more fire-related deaths than some other small cars -- because Pinto's sales were much larger. But the car wasn't established as defective, and had a lower rate of fires in accidents than the others.

To me, bringing up the Pinto isn't to re-debate it here. I bring it up because the feeding-frenzy in a case like Toyota's means it will "fix" whatever has the most "push" behind it from Congress and the media, and there may be other Toyota's which have a lot more need of recall -- but will be lost in the shuffle for lack of enough "noise" being raised about them.

 

Corollas haven't been recalled yet. They are being considered for recall over steering problems, but the recall button hasn't been pushed as yet. If it does get pushed, that will be pretty close to all.

 

NEWSFLASH - The ex-NHTSA employees saved Toyota $100 million on recalls in 2007: Toyota saved $100 million by limiting recall - Autos- msnbc.com

Cliff-Notes version:

Looks like Toyota put profits ahead of safety. That is a predictable occurrence when you are Safety Deaf.

 

With those documents it appears we now have our smoking gun. Very rough ride ahead for Toyota.

 

Add in the criminal investigation and the ride approaches the conditions that cause the brake system drop-out issue.

 

If Toyota sales suffers and punished for good reason(s), I would expect politicians to address possible job loses.

Some US Toyota plants have plan to halt production in San Antonio, Texas, and Georgetown to address growing inventory overhead.

Toyota employs 1,850 workers at the San Antonio plant and about 6,600 at the Georgetown facility. So far, none will be laid off during the production interruptions.

Toyota's US market share fell 3.8 points to 14.1 per cent in January after sales fell 15.8 per cent to 98,796 vehicles, according to Autodata.

And who is to gain after all these Bill claims and law sues?