An Orchestrated Campaign Against Toyota in Overdrive?
On Sunday, Toyota learned what it was like to be one of Detroit’s Big Three in the days before they hit upon hard times and Uncle Sam formally entered the car business.
Some are treating what Toyota is going through in its fight to deal with the gas pedal- and floormat-related sudden acceleration issues raised by consumers and the government as a bit of a justifiable payback. After all, they argue, the company received kid-glove treatment from car quality reviewers for so many years, perhaps well after they truly deserved it.
To a small degree, they may have a point. Even before Japanese transplants Honda, Toyota, and Nissan began making cars in the U.S., there seemed to be a bias against Big Three cars in magazines like Consumer Reports. Prodded largely by its Japanese competitors, Detroit had left the worst of its quality problems behind by the mid-1980s and generally began making very good cars, while quality reviewers occasionally seemed a bit over-enamored with foreign makers, particularly Honda and Toyota — companies which, despite their own very large size, were somehow perceived as underdogs to the big, bad Big Three.
I believe that Detroit has significantly narrowed the quality differences between its and others’ output to the point where in most cases it lags by so little that it’s virtually unimportant. However, the public’s perceived quality difference between Detroit and foreign makers, even of foreign makers’ U.S.-manufactured models, is far wider than it should be.
But one of the big reasons for that perception gap has to do with how the hard-news press, with substantial assistance from the plaintiffs’ bar, treated the Big Three during previous decades.
Yes, to name just a few examples, Ford Pintos had serious problems with exploding gas tanks. Yes, GM equipped some of its vehicles with transmissions that turned out to be suitable only for the flattest of terrains, and a few of its cars and trucks would pop into drive while idling. Yet as much as the tort bar would like to convince pliable juries that big companies, except for their unwillingness to spend a little money, can achieve perfection with every product that comes off the assembly line, it just isn’t so.
The legal and media narratives in many of the lawsuits that arose from these and other matters almost inevitably morphed from “the company made a serious mistake and should pay for it” to “this evil company and its evil executives were perfectly okay with seeing people continue to die, so they need to be sent a message and empty their coffers as punishment.” Meanwhile, at least until the late 1990s, trial lawyers tended to leave foreign makers alone, at least partially because U.S. CEOs supposedly imbued with excessive capitalist greed made better targets for sympathetic jury verdicts than supposedly less corrupt and more accommodating foreigners.
But going after the Big Three, or at least two of them, isn’t what it used to be. During the last half of the decade, the financial viability of each was often in serious question. Now that the government has effective control of GM and Chrysler, any trial lawyer trying to go after either now knows that he or she will be facing a defendant backed by potentially unlimited resources and with lots of potential dirty tricks up its sleeve — tricks that it didn’t hesitate to use during the two companies’ respective encounters with bankruptcy.
Thus, that Toyota would eventually become a target of choice is not surprising.
Let’s see: we now have government motors. we have chrysler also government owned. (not)surprisingly, both entities sales have declined. (who’da thunk it?) Who’s the chief competor? Ford? No? Toyota? must get rid of Toyota by any means possible. Duh.
Hello,
He told his spirit by one mant to write and say the following words in the night that Divide is a sign of david which will enable me and him see who created earth another spirit from unknow where David record are not written to the the man he can make night to fall in noon which can enable him say Divide is key of King David at night he will appear before the one that will show himcreator and told him how he can creat with out divide. when it happen in the the spirit that would have taken glory as divide a symbol of authority said eclipse have deceived you people that he will leave and go to places where record of King david was not and told them about david which the one that made eclipse to happen said you would told us about your king david befoee ordering him to say it at night because he can reverse what he did to deceive your soul now that source of eclipse theory cannot lead man to see his creator.reason he gave was louziness to to convert Dao inalph numerical code which we product Dawodu in thier temple now he can delayed time of our creator what did he thought they will him because cannot read patient of other being on earth.
Cheers,
Nzewi Uchenna osita
More payback from Barry to the Unions.
Toyota has resisted unionization at all of its plants in the US, and the UAW and their ilk can’t stand it. Now that they have a lackey running the show in the White House they can use the weight of the government to give Toyota some payback.
Barry and his friends are doing it to Ford (Look at the union contract negotiations) and now Toyota is next.
Free clue #1: Audi had the same problem a while back (10-15 years ago IIRC). NO problems were ever attributed to an actual mechanical failure or design/manufacturing issue with the car itself.
Free clue #2: The vast majority (90%+) of acceleration problems reported to the government are the result of operator error.
I’ll wait for some actual court documents, where people making statements can be put in jail for lying, before I start condemning Toyota.
What I am concerned with is the timing of it all. First the massive recalls announced weeks ago, now the Congressional Investigation for an issue that might be a non issue to begin with. Any car from ant maker can suffer sudden acceleration or a stuck gas pedal. I have personnaly experienced this on two cars from American and Japanese(Nissan) car makers. The question is if it is a systemic problem. The evidence presented so far has no context because it has not been compared to incidents from other Car Makers.
This investigation is pure political theatre designed to distract us from other problems this administration is having and giving a Democrat Congress something to do so it can improve its’ image.
The original issues were being worked on with the full knologe and co-operation of the Government. Sometimes making safety issues know to the public will harm and possibly kill more people than keeping quiet. A recall for a problem that has not been fully identified and resolved can not only be costly but might actually make the car unsafe. This is one reason that recalls can only be done once the engineering and testing is done.
I know Toyota may have based a few decisons on economic considerations that seem to impact safety issues but these things are done every day by every industry. It is impossible to be risk free. Every reduction in risk comes with a cost. Just remember this if there was a real systemic problem with Toyotas we would not need the Government to tell us it would be obvious by all the wrecked Toyotas and loss of resale value.
ked5: you stole my thunder!! I agree with you. . . the “o” needs to make the new GM look as good as possible, so why not destroy the competetion however possible-Chicago style politics, anyone?
Nov. 2, 2010…Our Second Independence Day.
There’s an unmistakable air of Charlie Yoke Able about these hearings, as well. Mainly on the part of the NHTSA and EPA.
For the last four decades, Toyota and the other Japanese automakers have been the darlings of those two agencies, for much the same reason that Consumer Reports had a love-affair going with them. It had nothing to do with quality- it had everything to do with politics. Toyota et al. made small, “ecologically conscious” vehicles that the “green” contingent loved almost as much as they love their mountain bikes (that they never ride off the pavement, to “show respect for Gaia”). They swooned over the Celica, and when the Prius came along they were almost begging to bear the designers’ children. After all, they could look down their noses at everyone else who was less “eco-conscious” while driving them. (Which is what the “deep-ecos” do best, after all.)
And in all this, there was a very strong disinclination to criticize Toyota about anything. Because any disapprobation might turn people away from their “good” cars, and toward buying “bad” American ones. (“Bad” in the ecological sense, that is.)
This would also tend to explain the decade of foot-dragging at NHTSA on the acceleration problem. Especially where it applied to the Prius; EPA really didn’t want anything hurting the sales of a vehicle they loved nearly as much as they loved the Segway. (OK, they hate both slightly less than they hate the idea of privately-owned vehicles in general.)
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, the two agencies, as agencies will, have turned on their former “friends” with Congress’ help- to protect themselves. Anyone want to bet that EPA and NHTSA’s role’ in not doing anything about this for ten years won’t get mentioned in the hearings?
BTW, I once had a runaway acceleration problem with a 1985 Jeep Cherokee; I had to run it into an earth bank to stop the vehicle. Upon examination, it was caused by a peculiarly-shaped throttle advance fitting which managed to jam itself against the underside of the carburetor mount. The mechanic at the dealership was familiar with the malady. He said that oddly-shaped piece had been mandated to clear a redesigned throttle-body assembly that had been mandated to improve mileage and reduce emissions. Said “mandates” came from- you guessed it- EPA. Along with the legal threats that kept GM (who built the engine) from altering the assembly to avoid the jamming problem to begin with. The mechanic suspected that EPA would just as soon render vehicles undriveable, on the grounds that they wouldn’t be “harming Gaia” in that state.
I’m still inclined to agree with him.
clear ether
eon
I think the Japanese deserve their reputation. I base this on the simplest of observations. I have two old friends who are professional mechanics. Both have repeatedly stated that they see far fewer Toyotas and Hondas than any other makes.
The goverment now virtually owns GM and Chrysler. They are just bullying the competition.
It was a pathetic display of partisanship politics looking for sound bytes nothing more. I was embarrassed having those politicians verbalizing on my behalf.
I am so glad you are on top of this. It just sounds so trumped up. Someone needs to “O’Keefe” that 911 call with the Lexus driver in California. It just sounds so amateurish. I think the thugs hired an actor to do the call then had background noise from a B horror movie. And how do these gas pedal problems compare to the SUV rollovers from a few years back in injuries? A comparison of the amount and severity of injuries would put the whole problem into perspective. I don’t remember hearing a 911 call of a rollover incident.
And GM doesn’t have to use these evil underhanded tactics to compete. When will they learn that the only thing holding American Industry back is the unions. We are unstoppable in industries that don’t have unions. “It’s the unions, stupid.”
Thanks for the focus on this slight-of-hand, and for your research. Let the sun shine in!
in most cases it lags by so little that it’s virtually unimportant
The dishonesty of partisan politics is stunning around here.
Toyota has been getting away with murder – and this administration is holding them accountable.
AND Pajamas members think that’s a BAD THING?
Funny this…
I told my friends this would happen after the Toyota recall. Now that we have GMAC (Government Making American Cars)I said it would not be long before they(GMAC) go after the foreign auto makers. It is cutting into the Governments profits when we buy from the overseas makers you know. This should prove to play out pretty interesting. Panels, inquiries, investigations.
There is a good news/bad news aspect of the Toyota sudden acceleration syndrome.
The good news is that it doesn’t happen very often but when it does it can have catastrophic effects.
The bad news is that the increasing use of drive-by-wire components like throttle control and steering can result in random software driven failures. With millions of cars on the road you will end up sampling every possible combination of events and will run down decision paths that aren’t normal.
For the most part loss of throttle control should not lead to an accident if the driver is aware and makes proper decisions. Therein lies the problem. Faced with a runaway car a driver must maintain control of the vehicle while he looks for a place to put the car, decide how to get there and observe what is in his way in very dynamic environment. Most drivers freeze because of sensory overload. As we all know, the best remedy is to put the car in neutral and use your momentum to get to a place of safety. Unfortunately, few drivers think of this obvious solution because they have never driven a manual transmission. They put the car in drive and away the go. If this happens in car with a manual transmission the driver will instinctively hit the brake and the clutch at the same time. Slamming the car to a halt may not be the brightest thing to do at 3:00 PM on the Capital Beltway but it does prevent a run away.
Interestingly enough, nobody has thought about going after VW diesels for unintended acceleration. There is a phenomenon in turbo-diesel know as engine run away. When the oil seals go on the turbo you can end up sucking oil into the engine. Diesels run on oil so it’s just as happy getting fuel blown into from the turbo as getting it injected through the normal route. It puts you in a dilemma. Do you keep the car in gear and save the engine or do you put it in neutral and get to the side of the road while engine self-destructs. You would be surprised how many people go for option 1. These are people who end up crashing and burning.
“I believe that Detroit has significantly narrowed the quality differences between its and others’ output to the point where in most cases it lags by so little that it’s virtually unimportant.”
I wonder if ol’ Tom has bought a car in the last 10 years. This statement makes me doubt it.
When I was looking for a compact for commuting back in 2004, I looked at US cars FIRST. I looked at the Chevy, the Ford and at Pontiac.
These three were cheaper than any of the imports, but they didn’t handle as well, the felt as cheap as a polyester North Korean made suit and the warrenties were bad.
I ended up buying a 2004 Hyundai Elantra. I spent more than if I had purchased a domestic, but I got a LOT better car.
Hey you United Autoworkers, don’t get mad at me. If your companies made as good a car I would have bought it. I tried.
Tristan Phillips (@3) wins the Kewpie Doll. It’s big labor, who along with Trial Lawyers and the abortion industry (etc.) own the Dimocrat Party. Toyota secretly agrees to negotiate with the UAW and all this goes away. Are you watching this, Nissan?
Toyota has been remiss..
They have been lax in their duties to the public.
I do not have any kind words for the Obama administration, and I do believe they will take this opportunity to grandstand and destroy toyota.
It is the grandstanding that bothers me. I don’t like these people (obama). I hate the pretending to have”gotcha” moments, the snide remarks, etc.
At the same time Toyota was wrong in how they handled things. If they fall , so be it. When you know there is something wrong and you do not fix… We will not buy GMC or any other government owned motors.
@17
“Toyota secretly agrees to negotiate with the UAW and all this goes away.”
This is it exactly. Nothing but a shakedown to force Toyota to accept the UAW. Chicago thugs.
Obama is the top car salesman in America. Also top used car salesman. Car sales professionals are taught to not bad mouth the competitions. This is 90% bad mouthing and 10% suspicious defects. It may actually heklp Toyota.
If Congress with an approval rating is trying to smear and denigrate a good car, it seems we would buy the opposite.
Now some legal facts. If Gubment Motors has a defect and there is a recall, the liability is zero because the car was built pre bankruptcy and the liabilities are written off.
Tom,
I think you are incorrect in your assertion that the Asian auto makers have gotten undeserved favorability in Consumer Reports and that the big 3 have closed the quality gap in recent years. On average the Asian auto makers are still producing cars lightyears ahead of the big 3 in quality. Sure, Detroit gets a winner every now and then, but there is a reason why Toyota, Subaru, Honda, and Hyundai continue to take market share from Detroit. Its not favorable reviews…its because everyone knows someone who raves about their import and someone else who complains about their domestic.
I obvious question … didn’t Toyota make enough of the “right” political donations ?
A Japanese man was on BBC last night saying that this was nothing more then the government going after its competition to return favours to the unions.
Why can’t we find that honesty on our media?
Before anyone gets really excited about Toyota’s “problems with unintended acceleration”, please recall the Audi 5000 “problem” of the same description.
After a laborious and thorough investigation, NHTSA couldn’t bring themselves to say that the actual cause was pilot error. They decided to call it “pedal misapplication”.
See, all better!
When I first noticed the congressional hearing beginning to percolate, I thought: Chicago-style mob hit from the UAW. This article reminded me to be more open-minded. I’d forgotten about the trial bar and their Willie Sutton problem. It’s a twofer. The same sort of lawyers were at the bottom of the Audi debacle, too. Remember the “Audi Victims Network”?
Buy American! What? No? Oh, sorry. Buy unAmerican! There, that’s better.
Tom Blumer is full of beans when he writes:
>Detroit had left the worst of its quality problems behind by the mid-1980s…
I bought a 1988 Ford Taurus station wagon and regretted it for 3 years before I finally dumped it.
The brakes on the car were nowhere near adequate to stop the car when it was fully loaded with passengers. 1 to 3 people, no problem. 8 people and you had to plan your stops way ahead. The damn car almost killed us on a mountain trip when it took way too long to come to a stop. It was the last American car I ever bought and I’ve yet to regret buying Hondas ever since.
Ford’s disdain for its customers is legendary. The exploding Pintos were a cost-benefit decision that Ford made in favor of saving costs. The Firestone tire problem on its SUVs were indicative that the same mindset remained at Ford 30 years later.
If Washington was as well run as Toyota is, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today. Toyota is just a scapegoat to distract folks from Washington’s failings.
What makes me crack up is how heavily Toyota funded the Democrats who are raising the biggest stink about all of this…
“On average the Asian auto makers are still producing cars lightyears ahead of the big 3 in quality.”
No, they aren’t. Ford competes with Toyota in reliability, Buick has been dueling with Lexus for top quality and dependability honors for the better part of the decade, occasionally wresting the top spot. GM and even Chrysler are superior to Mitsubishis and Suzukis. Chrysler, the LEAST reliable of the Big 2.5, is statistically no different in dependability than Nissan, the third best Japanese automaker. It is your statement that is erroneous. Honda’s quality has also been falling, with significant transmission problems in select models of the 2002-2007 year range, which they denied for a long time.
The author is correct. The perception of GM’s poor quality is hyperinflated to the point of being myth.
All of this does not mean that the Govt. isn’t abusing its position of power now that it has a dog in the fight. I don’t think this administration is above that. But before you go sympathizing with Toyota et al., please remember how their incestuous relationship with their government kept competition out of Japan. They’ve abused their relationship with Japan’s Corporatist government to such an extent that Bambi’s crew would have to work decades to match it.
Nice little car company you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Assuming that Toyota does fully understand what it happening, what can they do about it? Any business that raises a strong defense knows they are going to get hammered. Like the Chinese saying, the tallest blade of grass is the first to get cut. Businesses will just lay low, ride it out, and give political donations whenever possible.
While Obama may indeed be taking advantage of Toyota’s “crisis”, I have little sympathy for Toyota. While their cars are generally good, they have rarely been responsive when things go wrong. Their engines that coked oil is a good example. Toyota did their best to weasel out of that one. Our 1999 Camry threw a connecting rod right through the crankcase last year while my wife was driving it. That was exciting, to say the least. A friend’s 2002 Avalon began burning oil at just 30,000 miles. They gave him a hard time about it, and set the cutoff for the class action compensation just short of his production date, claiming it was fixed at that point. He will never buy another Toyota.
In our case, while our Camry was older, it pales in comparison with my 1983 Ford F-100, 27 years and 250,000 miles, without a major repair. Or even my 1995 Taurus, 15 years, 125,000 miles.
We replaced the Camry with a 2005 Honda Civic. What a disappointment. A tinny little car suitable only for local commutes. By contrast, our 2002 VW Jetta TDI diesel feels more like a BMW than an econobox, A great little car that gets a Prius-beating 48MPG.
To sum up, the Japanese car companies are just like any other large corporation: big, impersonal and profit driven. I’m not complaining, I’m a capitalist. I’m just trying to make the point that Toyota has given the consumer what they wanted, and nothing more. They are not saints.
Around 1990, the USA began to experiment with dynamic rollover crash tests, like Europe has done for years. Every single Japanese car failed. A few American cars, most notably the then-new Ford Taurus, passed, as did the majority of European cars. It was only after then, when safety became important in consumer’s minds, that Toyota responded. Remember the first Camry? Even Consumer Reports lamented the lightweight body structure.
After suffering through, what, 160 consecutive days of Abu Ghreib on the front page of the NYT, I think I recognize a Democrat/MSM political hit job when I see one.
Toyota is now the target for destruction, no longer GWB. We’ve seen daily articles expressing ‘concern’ about Toyota – every day a new gimmick or detail, every day the same goal of destroying public opinion favorable to Toyota – since no later than February 4th. And now Congress has jumped in with ‘hearings’, and promises to continue the monopartisan kangaroo trial for months more.
The conflict of interest of the Obama admin – manufacturers of the GM and Chrysler competition against Toyota, wholly purchased agents of the UAW – in pretending to weigh evidence for/against Toyota in these ‘hearings’ is shameful. Even their wholly-owned trial lawyers will recognize that, although they’ll play the Three Wise Monkeys instead of denouncing the conflict.
Nothing is better evidence for the need for breakup of the monopolistic cabal of the Democrat/Obama/MSM factory for churning out bigoted perversions of public opinion. This country needs diversity in its news gathering and propagation – even the British media have a wider spectrum than ours.
Citizen journalists and Pajamas Media, get busy. Or busier.
I wonder if these Congressmen realize that Toyota has several car manufacturing plants in the US employing a couple thousand people. It’s not really a black & white issue these days whether a car company is foreign or not.
I think these Congressmen should worry what the repercussions would be if they succeeded in their smear campaign and caused the loss of American jobs at US-based Toyota plants.
Well, as I’ve commented elsewhere, I write again here: I have an Olds with 90K+, a life-long GM customer, and I’m looking forward to the customer incentives sure to come as Toyota moves forward from this.
Be patriotic. Buy a Toyota now. Buy a couple. I just bought an FJ Cruiser for a third car even though I don’t need it. We already have a Sienna that is only two years old but we are looking at buying a new one early. We have to take down Government Motors, the UAW and Oprompter. The USSA needs to be reformed back into the USA. And that is a long road back given the hundred years of socialist devolution in this country.
Robert:
I have one quiblle with your post. If your 1999 Camry threw a rod last year then I would say you got your money’s worth. Although I have owned cars that racked up 6 digit mileage, I consider myself lucky for every mile above 100K that I get out my car. And I take excellent mechanical care of my cars.
Those jobs are in the South and West naman, not the UAW unionized North. They dont count. In fact, taxes should be raised on those Toyota workers who earn less than their Northern brothers, in order to bail them out and support those lavish wages and bennies.
The US auto manufacturers never had me as a customer, and dont look to be changing that anytime soon….though Im not anathema to Ford.
Ive owned Nissan, Honda, Toyota, (even a Mitsubishi), and now a BMW e46. All great vehicles.
The big question is,when will the Obananistas go after Ford?
I haven’t been paying all that much attention to this issue, mainly because the prospect of Government Motors doesn’t help my blood pressure, but one thought keeps coming up over and over…
The Camry has been a best-selling car for years, there are tens of millions of them on the road. And yet, there’s supposed to be a couple of dozen incidents of stuck accelerator pedals.
That works out to odds of roughly one-in-a-million, over the lifetime of the vehicles. If each Camry owner bought a lottery ticket when they took delivery of their cars, more Camry owners would win more than the cost of the car than would experience this “defect”. The industry standard for defect reduction is “six sigma” — 1 / 10^6, or one-in-a-hundred-thousand.
For most manufacturers, squeezing out a couple of thousand cars, a single instance of a “defect” would translate into a defect rate 100 times as large as Toyota’s — assuming that it exists at all.
Further, it’s exponentially more difficult to fix something that happens so infrequently — in fact, it’s not uncommon for the fix to be more dangerous than the original problem. Part of this is that you need to find the root cause of the issue — and that means sorting through millions of vehicles to find a sufficient sample of ones that exhibit the symptom.
In short, if you dominate the market in any product, you can be safer than all the alternatives and still have sufficient problems for muckrakers to pounce.
I’ll make my point quick and leave. Anyone who has tried to purchase a midsize finds very quickly that the Toyota is generally in far better condition after 100,000 miles. Perceived value?
American consumers know what value is and GM doesn’t match up when the miles stack up.
Contrary to what Der Furer Uberbama believes, Americans are patient with fools, but not fools themselves.
He will find out in 2012
Buy American! What? No? Oh, sorry. Buy unAmerican! There, that’s better.
Americans build, sell, and repair Toyotas, Hondas, and BMWs just the same way they do Fords and Chevys, dum dum.
They all are a boon to Americans, especially Americans who don’t have to pay union dues. I am not at all concerned by where the CEO parks his yacht.
I’m a Ford man myself (I drive an F250 4×4 with the Triton V-10 under the hood) but I harbor no grudge against “foreign” makes. And no, I won’t buy a GM or Chrysler vehicle until they go through a proper bankruptcy procedure and reorganize according to the rule of contract law – which eventually they will. The bailouts have only prolonged and worsened the inevitable crash.
The correct term for all this is “Kneecap Capitalism”.
I’m buying Toyota ADRs (the term for stock in foreign companies). The price will be artificially depressed for a year or so, then it will soar. You can start with only $200 by buying direct from the company.
Grand Rants tracked back with The Farce Behind The Toyota Hearings
Watching parts of this hearing sickened me. Many of the interrogators were grandstanding for the sake of their shaky re-elections later this year. Others treated the company as the most egregious manufacturer of cars in history. Toyota has an extremely serious situation on its hands, but they also have the resolve and resources to deal with the challenge and ensure the needed fixes are implemented as quickly and correctly as possible. Unlike GM and Chrysler, they don’t need government help to accomplish this and restore their reputation. The liberal representatives who participated have a bias against Toyota, mainly because unlike U.S. automakers, they do not employ union workers. But most troubling to me is that these small thinking House members who went out of their way to disgrace Mr. Toyoda and his company fail to recognize that Japan is now the largest holder of our debt. The Japanese are very protective of their own, especially companies as large and important as Toyota, and they could easily retaliate economically and quit buying our debt, as China has already done. For people like me who have done business with Japanese companies both here and in Japan, I’m all but certain their reaction to yesterday’s attempts to trash this company’s reputation will be extreme.
Anyone who tells you that the American car makers are as good as the Japanese is either a UAW employee or confused (probably both). Initial quality isn’t any where near as important as long term quality.
As someone who generally buys my car AFTER they get 100,000 miles on them – there is no power on this earth that would make me buy some excrement with an American name tag on it – especially anything smaller than a pickup truck. I don’t get off on fixing things every month or two or having to set up a credit account with a towing company.
You wash a Japanese car often, change the oil regularly, and drive it reasonably, and it will last for 15 years and 200,000 miles, easily.
My ’95 Maxima has 193,000 miles on it and the only significant issue it has is needing a new exhaust system. I’ll hold onto it until my brother decides to get rid of his 2008 Acura TL (another year or two).
Honda and Nissan had better be paying attention, though. As we can see with Toyota, the government needs to get the UAW in to their factories to reduce their quality to where GM and Chrysler can compete with their junk production.
this is absolutely government motors trying to run the competition out of town. it’s the chicago way. i’ve been driving for over 40 yrs. i’ve owned/driven ford, chevy, olds, dodge, plymouth, toyota, vw, honda and bmw. my two dodge minivans in the 1990′s literally fell apart; garbage cars. about 6 months ago my avalon was rearended by a chevy equinox. my damage: $792; his: over $5000. our cars ended up in the same repair garage and the owner told me the figure. have owned 8 different types of toyotas over the years, with not a single problem, save the a/c replacement in a camry with over 110,000 miles on it. this is about eliminating competition for the unions. given the choice, consumers will not buy inferior products.
45
Japan will retaliate. Not for being asked questions, and making apeasements, but the attitude and disgusting display by congress.
I do not see them accepting union workers, which may be at the bottom of the present “inquisition” by congress. Totally uncalled for.
Post #2 pretty much cleared up any questions I had, but we all know that the media and politicians can’t help but do the chicken little routine at least once a week.
Running intereference for government motors, or maybe just rent-seeking from toyota lobbyists… Whatever it is, I consider the media and politicians to be either lying or wrong no matter what the subject.
I just noticed another poster pointing out that japan can retaliate. All they need to is jerk the leash a bit by loaning the US less money, and our beta president and congress will come to heel promply.
Jay in LA
I own four cars, 1 American (2000 Dodge Intrepid), 2 Japanese (2002 Mitsubishi Spyder and a 2007 Subaru Outback) and 1 German. (I will leave it to you as exercise to figure out the manufacturer)
I have to tell you that the 2000 is perhaps the most reliable car I have ever owned. It has 125K on it with all factory components still intact. The a/c compressor blew up at about 118K. My son, who drives the car away at college, has three friends with similar cars all well past 100k who have same experience. I contrast this to my wife’s 1997 Subaru that was falling about by the time we reached 100k. Nothing fatal but I didn’t want to put lipstick on the pig so to speak.
When you buy cars with 100k on them you are cherry picking survivors. The cars that are poor condition (usually caused by a neglectful owner) have already died.
Real differences in reliability are not seen in average car but in the lemon rate. For most manufactures lemon’s are a rare thing these days (except maybe for recent Chrysler products.) American cars may not be as reliable or durable as Toyoda and Honda by they are much more reliable then Mercedes, BMW or the VW group.
My 10 year old BMW 330i e46 platform is purring like a kitten.
VW has initial and long term quality problems, but they are fun to drive….as opposed to the US cars which often arent even fun to drive.
Next purchase Subaru Outback 2001 to 2007.
The Intrepids were a good car, and also they tended to be owned by little old ladies, so they were good in the resale market.
PW/38; -remember how large, generous and hard-left is the Ford Foundation. So maybe Ford has a little protection –and won’t get the Bamboo Lounge treatment.
If the Mob-UAW-Tort bar-Democrat party combine can *only* get completely rid of all these foreigners, then sure we’ll all buy American again –say $200K for a nice shiny GM subcompact that “won’t hardly never get no customer complaints”.
Meanwhile the future fills with a royally-pissed off Japan in combine with a neighbor, an about-to-be-shortchanged-by-USA China.
Will our new DC masters –busily community-organizing our nice new soup kitchens and bread-lines –notice the #2 and #3 economies –no doubt followed very soon by the Eurozone and OPEC –falling into alliance against us?
Of course they will –after all, the world will be playing out the Democrats’ favorite policy, “trade war leading to world war”.
I don’t believe that the federal government is competent enough to put together “An Orchestrated Campaign Against Toyota”. We just have a bunch of useless Political Science/Lawyer trained politicians reacting to an ongoing rare but serious engineering problem. The incompetent government people feel that they have to do something to justify their jobs, but they’re incapable of making a quantative analysis of this problem. Flailing around looking for solutions and scapegoats is likely to have unintended consequences. In the end, a software upgrade to allow pushing on the brakes to override accelerator pedal inputs is probably the real solution, but Toyota needs time to test this software upgrade. In the mean time Toyota is sawing off the end of accelerator pedals and adding a shim to make the pedals spring back with more force to satisfy the “do something” demands. What are the odds that a mechanic at some dealer accidentally creates a new problem while “fixing” extremely rare unintended acceleration?
EE Times article on engineering problem of low probability failures and large production numbers.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222700620
Toyota & Honda dropped the ball on handling the recalls , they should have came forward with a full disclosure. Instead of waiting for a huge media blitz and tons of public pressure. But Toyota & Honda are not alone , I never seen so many car companies having recalls all at the same time. I had no idea my car which is not even a Toyota or Honda, was affected until I searched on http://www.carpedalrecall.com and found I had a bad Anti Lock control unit on my 2008 Pontiac G8 , So be careful
Re. 53 – the Ford family no longer have any influence on the Ford Foundation, that’s another of those inside coups the left is so good at. Full and generous employment without ever having to wonder what work looks like.
Re. quality, I have owned a fair number of cars over my 66 years, but I have never had any of better quality than my present (2003) Lincoln LS V8 – (no not the landyacht) – it was build in Wixom and although it has almost every feature you can think of, everything works without any failures noted over 6 years. I am quite certain that a Lexus would do the same. On the other hand BMW & Mercedes will not unless you spend generously on preventive maintenance. This is called choice.
I have absolutely no problem buying Ford again knowing that they have their act together with regards to the electrical and digital gremlins. Most major manufacturers are close, otherwise they would not stay in business.
The Toyota hearings are pure political theater… and food for the vultures in the trial bar. That is our real problem.. and it has to be solved if this country is to persevere. Ask yourself- how much of what I pay for a product is for hidden liabilities? It is not the upfront verdicts in civil cases – egregious as they are – that is the major cost, no it is the “cushion” everybody has to build in to hedge for the ambulance chaser known to be around.
We need a return to “prudent citizen” standard, compensation and punishment for real harm and acceptance that sometimes *hit happens.
..just an old cynical doc
“Toyota has been getting away with murder – and this administration is holding them accountable.”
# 13. G. Marks is Exhibit A in why this country is in so much trouble. Notice the critical thinking. The belief that a big business would intentionally murder some of its customers to save a few bucks. The blind faith that any administration will be fair and without ulterior motive when it decides to hold someone “accountable”. Geeze.
The unions would be thrilled to add the Japanese carmakers to their membership rolls, as well as Walmart. All I can say is, I will never buy GM or Chrysler cars due to the fact they are totally union controlled and owned by the government. Had they gone into bankruptcy and reorganized, the American public would have more respect for them. They will never be what they once were, those days are gone.
Is the U.S. bullying Toyota? You betcha!
http://www.examiner.com/x-6173-Ford-Examiner~y2010m2d8-Is-the-US-bullying-Toyota-over-safety-issues
I bought a Japanese because I hate unions, especially the UAW.
That was the only reason.
GM Chrysler now Toyota,Ford get ready. The Commies are in charge !!
I could not think you are more right