Toyota and the Union-backed, Government-led witch hunt

Interesting article which covers a lot of ground. I thought I'd expand on one point it makes.

One paragraph from it says:

[emphasis added]

Unfortunately for the "domestics, it's even worse than this indicates, as Toyota has shown it can even deliver with a UAW workforce.

While there is another post going into it in some detail, Toyota has already proven it can run a UAW-organized plant -- NUMMI, which was a joint venture between GM & Toyota. The plant eventually matched the same-car quality of Japanese & US versions. It also eventually received the J.D. Power gold (#1) medal for initial quality.

 

I think you are giving the government and unions way too much credit. All Toyota had to do was deal with the acceleration problem in a forthright timely manner and none of this would be happening.

 

I am okay with crucifying Toyota in the name of public safety. Question remains what were the root cause of "acceleration problem" And how does one define "timely manner" ? Guilty until proven innocent? yeap, "witch-hunt" seems to be the right description at this juncture.

 

You seem to be forgetting that Toyota plead guilty (they agreed to launch a recall; if they truly believed the acceleration problem was sourced in operator error, they could have fought the recall order).

The fact that more and more problems are getting noticed is not exactly a witch hunt. Toyota seems to have lost its way in pursuit of market dominance.

 

"Toyota and the Union-backed, Government-led witch hunt"

Why don't you take your union bashing some place else! Unions had nothing to do with the recall! Toyota engineers created a problem which was not detected soon enough or ignored. Where is the union in this?

 

It must be the union's fault because they didn't pull the switch to stop the production line? As in they should have known there was going to be problems based on the union's prior experience with GM and Ford having 'growing pains'....

It is always easier to blame someone else than to have to take personal accountability. Ask Tiger.

 

And no one who was ever innocent would plead guilty. Remember what happened to Audi? They claimed their innocence right through, and were proven correct by the government and the courts. Their reward was a loss of revenue due to negative publicity that nearly bankrupted the company and took 10-15 years to recover from.

 

I certainly hope GM is taking these claims as seriously as Toyota is:

Since there is no evidence so far that the recalled accelerator assembly is related to any of the claimed incidents, and neither Toyota or the NHTSA were able to find a mechanical failure to blame for those incidents, I'd say they are responding in a timely manner. Until a problem is found, its pretty tough to do anything about it. Sadly the number of fraudulent claims of "unintended acceleration", as likely illustrated by the above random sampling from the NHTSA database, make it very difficult to identify real cases and sort out their causes.

I'm not sure I would call it Gov or UAW led, but its a witch hunt to be sure, and there are certainly those with an interest in seeing Toyota fail that are trying to get as much mileage out of this as they can.

Rob

 

-toyota unresponsive to investigators
-secret contents in blackboxes
-toyota hiring NHTSA investigators to take the heat off
-toyota papertrail of coverup(subpeonaed lawyer materials

The next three weeks will be even more interesting than the last three weeks.

 

It's the American media that has targeted Toyota with one of its feeding frenzies.
Why? The media is big business, and has connections to the American car industry and the labor unions. Toyota has a record of leading reliability of its cars, and I believe there is an effort in the media to undermine it.

Right now, Honda is having a big sale. Toyota has been offering incentives as well.
Both are trying to keep their U.S. market share.

In my view, there has never been a better time to buy a Honda or Toyota.

 

That may be the craziest theory yet. Media's connections to the car industry and labor unions? Are you serious? The media has had a regular love afair with GM over the last 30 years? C'mon you can do better than that.

 

The GM/Media love affair was solely based on the advertising dollars. So much so that regularly, GM wielded directional influence such that if the wrong image / persona was cast against GM, a network knew that it could cost them 10's of millions in lost revenue.

Hugh? Talkin' out of both sides of our face, are we? "Giving ... unions way to much credit ..."??? Seems to me, prior to GM's bankruptcy, a certain GM dealer gave U.S. auto worker unions PLENTY of credit ... for being a substantial cause of GM's miserable failure(s).



.

 

Hill you have got to show me some examples of a GM/media love affair.

 

Well, if you were one of the 500,000 2009 - 2010 Corolla buyers like me, who only found out that their $20,000+ car has the worse steering found in any car built since the 1970s, you would understand whether this was a witch hunt, or something to be politically blamed on a third party such as unions, or some other nonsense conspiracy or not.

Toyota transformed itself from the best car manufacturer to a rather substandard car manufacturer in just a matter of a half decade. As the CEO Toyoda said, their greed for world domination without investing in human resources is to blame.

This is an extremely good lesson for any big company. Steve Jobs, Microsoft, and other successful CEOs and companies should learn from it in an utmost manner.

 

GM Pulls Advertising from L.A. Times

The love affair stops, as soon as "getting their way" stops. Please don't make me post a dozen more examples ... as this is typical. Not that GM is the worst at this tactic (back in the day when they had money to waste) nor are auto manufacturers the only industry.

That said, it's too bad GM wasted 10's of millions on "sexy Hummer" ads ... they could have stayed in the black.
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Toyota may recall Corollas over steering fault fears

...

The announcement was accompanied by an extraordinary admission by Mr Toyoda that Toyota’s expansion drive to become the world’s biggest carmaker had seen the company swell beyond its competence.

The growth of the business, he said, was too fast compared with the growth of Toyota’s human resources.

More than 8.5 million vehicles have been recalled by Toyota in a series of quality slips that have seen problems arise with the accelerators and brakes of models across the Toyota, Lexus and Prius ranges.

Legal experts believe that, should legal actions go badly against Toyota, the company could find itself paying compensation amounting to more than $3 billion.

Mr Toyoda, who said that he would attend US congressional hearings into the Toyota recall if invited, added that his company “does not attach importance to the financial cost of recovering customer trust”.

Toyota’s world-famous production system, Mr Toyoda said, was fundamentally designed to meet actual market demand. By pushing an aggressive growth strategy, Toyota lost sight of the production ethos that had built its once formidable reputation.

“We may not have developed appropriate engineering skills and human resources,” Mr Toyoda said. “We did not take enough effort and time to nurture these human resources, and our ability to respond to complaints from customers may not have been sufficient. But we are now going back to basic principles.”

...

 

I just think things have a way of balancing out. What goes up must come down.

 

The recall launch is closer to an Alford plea than a guilty plea. They are already being being found guilty in the court of public opinion, so the best business plan is to acknowledge that, pay the penalties quickly, and get over with it.

The Audi experience shows the business folly of trying to prove innocence even if you really are innocent. The cost of the battle far, far exceeded the worst case cost of a guilty plea. See [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyhrric_victory"]Pyrrhic victory[/ame].

I am not using this as an argument that Toyota is innocent. Good business practice suggests that they would be taking this action in either case.

 

You are quite right on this one. Our modern media benefits from all feeding frenzies, regardless of who has connections to what.