Toyota's no friend of mine, but it is the brightest star on the Japanese industrial sector, and it didn't get there for nothing. You kind of have to respect that. The way the American media's been reporting it, you'd think they were fly-by-night operators selling cheap sell-through generic product. You'd think that as a corporation they've committed genocide.
Let's go from the obvious bits. No conspiracies, no drawing of long bows. Toyota's being hit hard by the American government because it's the biggest competitor to the American Government which now owns Parts of GM and Chrysler. So they've gone and seized upon the recent recall and turned it into a media-hype event where even the Transport Secretary says "don't drive them" and then restates it as "If you have problems take it to your dealer."
If that isn't setting up for panic amongst owners, I'd think the owners were insensitive or brain dead. But you know, you have to look at it is what it is. GM and Chrysler are in such a bad state that the only way to get the American buyer back to buying American is to scare them out of their Toyotas.
For the record, here's this entry here about the sudden unwanted accelerator claims that started all of this.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is often called upon to referee disputes between car owners and an automaker. In the cases listed below, consumers complained that their cars accelerated unexpectedly. Toyota blamed misplaced or improper floor mats, but the consumers disagreed. After interviewing the drivers and company representatives, the NHTSA sided with Toyota.
Here's something from the Financial Post up in Canada.
There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world's greatest auto maker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesman such as U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of U.S. economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war.
The White House has denied any such motivation on the part of the United States. But that denial lacks credibility. While it may be technically true that President Obama's team didn't explicitly reach a decision to target Toyota, nobody in this crowd needs a presidential order to turn the Japanese auto giant's Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) problem into a national industrial advantage for the United States. The owners of union-dominated Government Motors can spot a strategic economic opportunity without waiting for the memo from head office.
California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota's closure of a unionized California plant.
Wednesday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood's cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply "stop driving" their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing. If Toyota drivers are worried, they can take their vehicles to a dealer where, as Mr. LaHood knows, there was nothing the dealer could do since it is expected to take weeks if not months for Toyota to "fix" the alleged cause of Toyota's alleged sudden acceleration problem.
Toyota shares continued their SUA plunge Wednesday, ending just below $74, down from recent highs of $92. The company has lost $23-billion in market capitalization since the crisis began.
At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem.
So I'm not alone in this observation. I keep saying that this in no way affects my sense of the Toyota brand. If it were a choice between a Toyota, a GM, a Chrysler, I'd happily stick with the Toyota. I'm not abandoning my long-held beliefs about the brand on the say-so of a media circus in America. I get it that there are a lot of people that want Toyota to fail. Like GM, Chrysler, the US Government, and probably Hyundai as well; but in all likeliness the media beat up is exactly that - a beat up.
I've been saying for some weeks that maybe this is Toyota' prelude to closing factories in America. On the basis of the White House-led media-circus, I'd be inclined to suggest they move those factories to Canada and Mexico on the double. Move those jobs right out of America and then see what Mr Obama makes of that Sudden Accelerator move.
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