Here’s a story from Fortune Magazine published on CNN Money:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/01/autos/toyota_mistakes.fortune/index.htm?hpt=T2
They question Toyota’s management, organization, and cost cutting efforts.
Should Toyota release their root cause analysis for the world to see to stop the speculation in the press? Or would the official root cause analysis just raise questions about the depth and accuracy of the analysis and of the resulting corrective actions? Surely it must be done by now with approved corrective actions on the way to the dealers. No matter what, it may come out as future lawsuits (and their will be many) make their way through US courts.
Here’s another article titled: “Will you buy a Toyota now?”
See:
http://auto.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/01/would-you-buy-a-toyota-now/27385/
It appears Toyota has lost the trust of customers and public at large.I was more concerned for our daughters driving Toyota in USA.
I was reading TOYOTA Way and now decided to write Toyota Away.
My topic is titled—Keep AWAY from TOYOTA WAY –
Toyota will get kicked around whether it releases its report or not. There are a number of driving factors, starting with the UAW and Big Three influence helping to feed the frenzy of Toyota’s issues, as well as press people jumping on the story of the day to splash across TV and newspapers.
Whatever the final result is, one thing I am confident in is that Toyota will learn from this and be a better company for it. When I look at experts in quality talk of the problem, almost all of them believe Toyota will find the solution and become better for it, but that doesn’t sell newspapers.
And as to the question, will I buy a Toyota now? I’ve driven Toyota’s for almost 20 years and have never had a problem with any of them and I’ll certainly buy another one.
Not necessarily the Toyota specific root cause:
While driving another manufacture’s car, I had sudden maximum acceleration (the tachometer immediately pegged past the redline). I was fortunate because the first time this occurred I was still in ‘park’, so I had some warning. After turning the car off and on again, the symptom stopped. Knowing that if this happened again, I would immediately put the car in neutral, I attempted to drive the car. Sure enough within a couple of blocks sudden maximum acceleration happened again. I put the car in neutral and coasted into a parking lot.
In assessing the car, my husband found that the plastic battery post cap (used for side post batteries), was lodged at the butterfly to the carburetor, holding the butterfly open. Apparently the plastic battery cap had been sucked into the line when the air filter was recently replaced. Once the plastic cap was removed, no more issue. We now have 216K miles on the vehicle and it runs great.
The vehicle is a 1991, and I’m not sure if new cars have the same set-up. But beware of this potential root cause for sudden maximum acceleration.
So Toyota had a major recall, and they handled the PR around the issue poorly. Let’s remember every major car manufacturer has had product recalls at one time or another – and some have involved significantly more vehicles than this one. The Ford Explorer/Firestone example is another high profile case, but if you delve into the records you will find a large number of other recalls that have flown under the media radar. Many such recalls occur without the owner even being aware as the faults are rectified during the routine vehicle servicing.
Whatever Toyota do now they will be cruzified by the US press. Outside the US, while this is making the papers it is not seen as such a big deal as it appears to be in the US.
When considering root causes of the bad PR it would be interesting to see how many people consider if the fact this event got such a high press profile was because a few (very small number) of people died in car crashes, or because Toyota overtook a US car company as #1.
So, should Toyota release their root cause analysis – I say no, best they just get on with fixing the problems and preventing future events and let the media circus move onto it’s next big story. As the Ford Explorer event showed, people will soon forget and start buying again (although perhaps that’s because the Ford was ‘American’).