Now For Something that Really Bugs Me

This is why one needs to send big bucks to the state's Senators & Congressmen. Do you really expect the Senators from Michigan to support or even suggest scrutiny of the domestic auto industry? The Big 3 whined about the Supercar program & it was gutted.

 

Times have changed. We use to have a civil government that applied common sense. These days we have a government that blames everybody but themselves for their bad decisions. The public gets more angry with the government. The government points the finger at any large target, usually businesses and passes bad legislation creating a worse problem.

Our government doesn't solve problems any more. They are the problem.

Keith

 

Comparison of the number of cars recalled for different manufacturers does not provide a valid comparison of the probability (risk) of recall because each manufacturer produces different numbers of cars. A valid measure of the risk of recall for manufacturers uses the proportion of cars produced that are recalled (probability of recall), rather than the absolute number of recalled cars. If manufacturer A produces a million cars, with 100,000 that are recalled, (10% recalled) and manufacturer B produces 10 million cars, of which 500,000 are recalled (5% recalled), then manfacturer A has twice the risk of recall compared to manufacturer B. Nevertheless, manufacturer B had 400,000 more cars recalled.

 

It's quite simple really. The government has an ownership in GM and they want to avoid bailing out the american auto companies any further.

The secretary of transportation would've kept his hole shut if it were an American company recalling the cars and not say "stop driving the vehicles."

 

This info should help assuage some of your anger. Ford has not gotten a dime of bail out cash. Ford has IMHO turned around their bad rep and now makes better quality cars. They still will need to do more if they ever intend on earning my money again.

 

Had there not been a media frenzy, would we had still have these recalls from Toyota? That is the question I ask myself..

 

I believe the Gen III brake fix would've eventually been released as a TSB if it wasn't for the recall. This is what usually happens when sufficient number of owners make enough noise about a particular issue (e.g. blurry A/C display).

 

Maybe There wouldn't be such a frenzy if toyota fixed the issue the first time, instead of issuing the bs floor matt recall. That's the same thing that landed ford in the hot seat over the ford explorer tire exploding fiasco.

Sorry Toyota fanboys and apologists, it's Toyota inability to acknowledge the issue for years and then offer a "non-fix". Add to the fact that there are toooooo many ex-toyota employees on the NHSTA board and they let the issues slide. That sounds very "GM" of Toyota

I have really been wondering why people keep saying Ford recieved gov't bailout. They DID NOT! it might be hard to understand, but this american company has turned itself around, while a certain japanese company is heading down the good 'ole GM path.

 

I think 32kcolors gave the answer.
The dept. of transportation is protecting the government investment on GM, simple as that.
Altough they should act on the benefit of the driver, and be objective on security issues, they became a way to influence economic values.
This is a shame and way out of their role as an office, but ecomomy is THE most important issue for all governments.

 

Clear as day to me, Mr. Toyoda really pissed someone off and they hired a Voodoo lady. The man is wading through some seriously bad Karma or something. There is no way this level and intensity of bad isn't personal.

 

Remember the Ford Pinto problems. A lot of people died in a Ford Pinto crash years ago. Ford final acknowledge the problem after many people had died from a Pinto crash. Ford stop making the Pinto, end of problem. They decided that it was too expensive to fix the problem. I knew many people who had own a Ford Pinto and they seems to like the car.

 

27 people died in total with a car that had a production run of more than 2 million in total. Hardly the "fiery death trap" the media hyped it to be. But Ford was castigated as an "insensitive" company because they decided to just payoff the lawsuits, rather than fix the problem...

see this article extract below: [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto]Ford Pinto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

"Safety problems and scandal
The model became a focus of a major scandal when it was alleged that the car's design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in a rear-end collision which sometimes resulted in deadly fires and explosions. Critics argued that the vehicle's lack of a true rear bumper as well as any reinforcing structure between the rear panel and the tank meant that in certain collisions, the tank would be thrust forward into the differential, which had a number of protruding bolts that could puncture the tank. This, and the fact that the doors could potentially jam during an accident (due to poor reinforcement)[citation needed] allegedly made the car less safe than its contemporaries.
Ford allegedly was aware of this design flaw but refused to pay for a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 repair against the monetary value of a human life, in what became known as the Ford Pinto memo.[10][11][12] The characterization of Ford's design decision as gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to significant lawsuits. While Ford was acquitted of criminal charges, it lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue that seats four."[13]
The NHTSA put pressure on Ford to recall the Pinto, motivated by public outcry and pressure from groups such as Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety. Initially the NHTSA did not feel there was sufficient evidence to demand a recall due to incidents of fire. The 27 deaths attributed to Pinto fires is the same number of deaths attributed to a transmission problem in the Pinto, which resulted in 180 total deaths in all Ford vehicles, and in 1974 the NHTSA ruled that the Pinto had no "recallable" problem.[14]
Nevertheless, in 1978 Ford initiated a recall providing a dealer installable "safety kit" that installed plastic protective material over the offending sharp objects, negating the risk of tank puncture.[15]
In 1981, an automobile accident that killed Lilly Gray and badly burned 13-year old Richard Grimshaw resulted in the court case Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.,[16] in which the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District upheld compensatory damages of $2.5 million and punitive damages of $3.5 million against Ford, partially because Ford had been aware of the design defects before production but had decided against changing the design.
Due to the alleged engineering, safety, and reliability problems, Time magazine included the Pinto on its list of the fifty worst cars of all time.[12]
However, a 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz[17] claimed the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. The number who died in Pinto rear-impact fires, according to Schwartz, was well below the hundreds cited in contemporary news reports and closer to the twenty-seven recorded by a limited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database. Given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built), this was not substantially worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argued that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles, and that the supposed "smoking gun" document that plaintiffs claimed showed Ford's callousness in designing the Pinto was actually a document based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations about the value of a human life rather than a document containing an assessment of Ford's potential tort liability."

 

What if there isn't anything to fix? It's entirely possible that all this fuss does not have a physical cause. Toyota can't fix what isn't broken.

There may be a real problem. We can't completely discount that idea, nor can we completely discount the possibility that there is no physical problem.

Tom

 

We are not talking about WHAT IFs!!!! It was a problem and plenty of us have had the problem. What is your problem? I don't care to waste my life on a car that is made faulty by Toyota. Toyota is just a company and I have no love over any company. I only expect what I paid for because it is just business. I bought their cars because of reliablity and repuation.

When we had the brake problem which they knew about but when it surficed they wanted to cover it up by saying that there are no faults when the new Prius after 2010 has been updated with the new software for the brakes. Read previous posts please regarding this issue instead of just blantely bluring out nonesense.

In that regards I don't care what happens to them. They need to get burned to learn their lesson. AS for Ford I really don't care what they do because I won't ever buy their cars so no it doesn't bother me at all.

 

I don't have a problem. I believe that it is you that alleges a problem. I'm still waiting for some solid evidence. Stating that one has had a problem is no proof that it happened.

Tom

 

Fear has always been used by the media to attract an audience, whether selling newspapers or getting ratings. Creating or exaggerating conflict is a part of this.
Heck, they even do it with the weather these days. Yahoo weather raises a critical weather flag if the wind is blowing more than 10 mph. The possibility of snow is frequently overdone--especially on local TV news.

In fact, one can't imagine the mass hysteria generated if the media would want to do something with Global Warming. Maybe that's too serious for them to get involved with.

My suspicion is somebody saw a way to undermine Toyota's reliability reputation--cut their sales, and jumpstart the weakened American car industry. The impetus could have come from Michigan politicians, Auto labor unions, American car lobbyists--and their friends in the media. Any number of these. The initial problems Toyota had could have been real--probably typical of any car company--or they could have been staged. Hard to say.

To those who don't believe in conspiracy theories, I say look to your local law enforcement. The first thing they look for in any crime is a motive. There is a good reason for everything.