It's not just Toyota recalling vehicles!

It's a combination of issues:

1) The press are a bunch of jackals. Once they smell blood there is no stopping them.

2) The U.S. has a long tradition of bringing down the mighty. We love to see the mighty fall, and then we rush in and pile on.

3) Lawyers. Unlike most professions, lawyers in the U.S. can create business by stirring up discontent. Stir up enough angry consumers and you have a class action lawsuit.

Tom

 

It's political. The leading auto worker's union, the UAW, contributes millions of member dues extracted and given exclusively to Democrat candidates like Barack Obama.

Toyota is not only the best selling American vehicle, they also have no union shops, both seen as obstacles to General Motors that is now owned by the US government and run by the UAW.

So there is a large school of thought that believes this anti-Toyota campaign is being run in part by Democrats who have formed several committees to "inquire" about possible wrongdoing by Toyota executives. Five are currently being sued for racketeering among other things.

As usual, the current group of pols will overreach and it will backfire. There's a reason Toyota built so many plants in politically sensitive states and hired locally.

 

Good point. And who would benefit the most from this, GM?

 

So it would be good business to shut down the American plants? Are you nuts? Toyota doesn't want this to get anymore out of control than it already is.

 

By having their lackies in Washington "force" them into "bankruptcy" (one of the fastest litigations in the history of American law, note) GM was able to disolve all their UAW contracts and re-negotiate them. I don't call that being "run" by the union.

 

Because Peugeot did not destroy the market of GM, Ford and Chrysler in the US - the US Car Mafia, that is. Toyota did (together with other Japanese/Korean manufacturers, including in a way German manufacturers). And Toyota sold cars during the crisis with the clunkers program, while the big 3 didn't that much. And Toyota is number one in the world and is not american.

So now they want to bring Toyota down ("enough with the Japs"). This is my feeling and as an observer from the outside.

Regardless of whether there are problems or not. IMHO Toyota did not understand this. They think that because they employ lots of people in the US and are number one, they are safe from the american car manufacturers' lobby.

Not to mention that the "Japs" make higher reliability cars than americans (or at least it was at the beginning - american quality has improved a lot, thanks to the japs, that is - otherwise americans would be probably still buy the same quality as 20 years ago - you know, the benefit of competition).

Anything now is good to take Toyota down.

Interesting is that the Congress is asking whether NTHSA was too slack on Toyota. As if to say, why did you not look seriously into this before and waited only now to bring up all sorts of crap (see the Corolla steering thing)?

It seems like as if all of a sudden Toyota cars have become unsafe and people are dying like flies driving them. At least this is what you get from the media and the actions from the US governing bodies.

Why all this clamor in the US and not in the EU? (where likely millions of Toyotas are driving around; and there are controlling bodies in the EU, actually several). Why all this accelerator thing has come up in the US and nothing ever came up in Europe? And why "now" and not 1 or 2 years ago? Some car models that have "defective" accelerators have been built quite some time ago - not "yesterday".

I smell "mafia-style" actions here in the works.
If there is something that doesn't work it has to be fixed and I am not defending Toyota, but this whole thing is way overblown, a lot not based on facts (it is not proven that the accelerator mechanics has caused undeniably any accidents so far, as far as I understood), thanks also to the presumptuous/over-confident Toyota behaviour (what I call the "we know better" approach).

 

There is a split, but not all of us in the USA share the party line.

Tom

 

Toyota sells less than 5% of the vehicles in Europe, not 17% as in the US.

 

That's because most Americans don't know what a "Peugeot" is. If CNN led with the tagline "Is your Peugeot Safe?" most people would think it was a report on protecting your poodle.

I'm just kidding. Conspiracy theories aside, I do think it is valid to believe that Toyota has suffered disproportionately in comparison to other automakers as almost a backlash from decades of success. Plus the contrast simply is greater. Toyota is a victim of their own success. We would be "number" to the news if Toyota was routinely recalling cars every year.

I'm not a blind Toyota Fan, I think it necessary to have investigation, evolution and improvement if needed by either Toyota, The NHTSA or both. If mistakes were made, or even greater, then it should be brought to light. BUT I'm also wishing that we would just get through this, and Toyota could return to making cars. It does seem to me like we are in a stuck cycle of constant accusation and inuendo.

 

A wider choice in europe, you must be kidding. The US has by far the most manufacturers invovled.

 

Are you watching the hearings? This is devastating for Toyota. It will take years to recover.

 

"Perhaps GM et al should just concentrate on building better quality, reliable and fuel efficient vehicles that people actually want world wide."

See, that's just it! much easier to keep the status quo and bring down the opposition with lawyers and media frenzy over NOTHING, rather than build things people want. Heck, we specialize in the overhyped media frenzies over nothing in this country! So proud. sarcasm.

 

Malorn, if it will take "years" for Toyota to recover from the media much ado about nothing frenzy, how long will it take Ford to recover from the reports that they decided to let owners go up in flames rather than fix their cars, since it was thought to be cheaper to the company ?

You are so FOS