The Detroit News has just published a quote that allegedly comes from a January 16 email from Toyota Motor Sales USA group vice president for environmental and public affairs Irv Miller to “company officials in Japan.” Miller’s quote reads:

I hate to break this to you but WE HAVE a tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models. We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We better just hope that they can get NHTSA to work with us in coming with a workable solution that does not put us out of business.

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Chrysler is celebrating the Ram’s continued sales slide (relative to last year’s pathetic numbers) by plastering a 100 foot-wide Ram Heavy Duty on its headquarters, along with a final confirmation that Motor Trend really does serve as Detroit’s marketing department of last resort (as if such confirmation were needed). But hey, at least they gussied up the Auburn Hills digs to celebrate something other than the promise to continue foisting sub-par products on the buying public through the year 2107.

The UK gets a bit of a harsh stereotype. Allegedly, we’ve got bad teeth, drive on the “wrong side of the road” and are very reserved (apparently, that’s a bad thing). We also call ads or TV commercials “adverts.” We may be odd, but believe it or not, we can kick “bottom” when we feel like it. Now I could point to the Burning of Washington, but I’ve been advised by Führer Schmitt that this may be “too soon,” and could “hurt their feelings.” Nor will I point to Waterloo or the Iranian Embassy Siege. What I’m pointing to is the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA). They are quite a rabid bunch. If they don’t like something, they’ll kick its bottom and ban it. Like this advert, or this one. They’re also quite hard on automotive adverts, too. In 2007, the ASA banned an advert from Toyota about the Prius for being “misleading” (you can watch the advert here). And now, Renault is copping it in the neck (as we fancy to say.) Read More >

The AP [via canadianbusiness.com] reports that two separate bills to make the Corvette Kentucky’s official state car appear to be dead in the state’s legislature. State Rep. C.B. Embry Jr., R-Morgantown, suggests that the failure of these bills would be perceived as a snub by GM, who builds Corvettes in Bowling Green. Not so, say GM reps.

With or without a bill, the Corvette is an iconic American sports car, and we’re proud to build it in Kentucky. It shouldn’t be perceived as a snub, and we don’t take it as that.

But GM’s downplaying of the news hides the possible cause for what otherwise would be a win-win political proposition.

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Poor Sergio Marchionne… the man can’t go anywhere without being interrupted. The Fiat/Chrysler CEO’s speech today in the buildup to the New York Auto Show was interrupted twice, once by the the ubiquitous Teamster protesters, and once by a test of the hotel’s fire alarm system. But then, maybe people would let him speak if he had more to offer than the same lukewarm assurances that everything is going marvelously in Chrysler-land. The Detroit News summarizes his speech by saying Marchionne believes Chrysler will sell the 1.1m vehicles in needs to break even this year, and that it will do so without getting pulled into an incentive war.Which would be hard to do anyway, considering Chrysler spends more on incentives at “normal” levels than any of its competitors.

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Nearly a month ago, Toyota’s Jim Lentz was asked by National Public Radio about the then-new “shim fix” for sticky accelerator pedals.

NPR asked: “if I’m a Toyota owner subject to this recall and I say ‘I don’t want a repaired accelerator pedal, I want a new one.’ Is that an option?” To which Lentz replied: “it will be looked at on a case-by-case basis.” When NPR asked for Lentz to clarify what he meant by “case-by-case basis,” he said “It’s really up to… between the dealer and the customer. We would like to see customers get this fix done with the precision cut steel bar and see how that is. I think the customers are going to be very satisfied with overall quality of the pedal and the feel of the pedal.”

At the time, this was interpreted as a not-so-great sign for Toyota’s “precision cut” shim fix. Reinforcing the impression that some might not be happy with the fix, a Toyota memo to dealers has surfaced today at the AP [via Google], which requests that:

If a customer is not satisfied with the operation and/or the feel of the accelerator pedal after the reinforcement bar has been installed, please assist us by assuring a replacement pedal is provided at no charge to these customers

Which makes us wonder: is there anyone out there who has had the shim fix done to their recalled Toyota only to have the problem reoccur? Has anyone requested a replacement pedal instead of the shim fix, and had a Toyota dealer turn you down? Toyota is probably playing it safe by asking dealers to provide new pedals, but we’re cant help but wonder why they would cast suspicion on the shim fix this way. Any ideas?

The “First Drive” is one of the perennial stumbling blocks of automotive journalism. In return for exclusive access to the latest, most-hyped automobiles that everyone wants to get their hands on, outlets like Edmunds Inside Line are asked to swath their “First Drive” write-up in the most glowing terms possible. Or, as we’ve put it before, the price of an exclusive story is a straight face. Unfortunately the results of this kind of compromise are difficult to read with straight face. We’ve seen no better example of this than Inside Line’s recent “First Drive” of the Honda CR-Z, which yielded such unfortunate lines as:

The CR-Z is like a Tesla Roadster, but without the $109,000 price tag.

You know, besides having a different powertrain driving different wheels, a huge performance disparity, and, well, everything else.

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Over the weekend I penned a screed calling baby boomers to task for embracing retro style over the the values that made the revolutionary cars of their era so revolutionary [editor’s note: there’s nothing like having a carburetor on your 35 year-old motorcycle magically fix itself to inspire faith in old, simple machinery]. The new New Beetle was square in my crosshairs over the weekend, but it’s hardly the only example of boomer retro-madness. Another favorite for nostalgic boomers are the legendary muscle cars that marked the high-water point for Detroit thunder, and this feverish demand combined with limited original runs have run the prices of famous muscle cars into the Barrett-Jackson stratosphere. It’s also inspired a legion of knock-off and replica manufacturers, who see huge money to be made by aligning supply with demand. They, in turn, have inspired a number of huge lawsuits from the original creators of the limited-edition legends. Carroll Shelby’s prolific legal battles against creators of Cobra replicas have given him the reputation of being a guy who never met a buck he didn’t like, and now GM has joined the Shelby legacy, suing Mongoose Motorsports for daring to produced replicas of the 1963 Corvette Grand Sport roadster.

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“Leading San Francisco product liability attorney, Mary Alexander states if you or a loved one has been injured or killed due to stuck accelerator pedals, break issues, or steering problems prompted by a defective Toyota vehicle, you may have a product liability claim that would entitle you to compensation for your injuries and damages.”

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I conduct a car reliability survey at TrueDelta.com. Since we promptly update our results four times a year, we can report on new models ahead of anyone else. Last year, we announced that the 2009 Jaguar XF was faring poorly. This provoked a blistering backlash from owners at a particular Jaguar forum. In the end, threads on reliability were deleted and future ones all but banned in the interest of preserving what remained of the UK auto industry.

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Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is a regular Japanese guy: Shy in public, but blogging on his computer every day. Using the handle “Morizou,” he blogs about his love for sports cars and auto racing on Gazoo.com, which he founded in 1998, if Todayonline has it right. Akio Toyoda is also an avid racer. His  appearances at the 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance race in a Lexus LFA are legend. He is chickening out! Read More >

The photo enforcement industry announced on Friday the creation of a new red light camera and speed camera advocacy group. The Partnership for Advancing Road Safety (PARS) describes itself as an organization that seeks to use best practices to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities on American highways. The group’s number one priority is countering the growing nationwide backlash against the use of automated ticketing machines that has resulted in multi-million dollar loses for camera vendors.
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The Detroit News reports that the United Auto Workers are gearing up for battle for a surprising new cause: greenhouse gas emissions standards. Alan Reuther, Legislative Director of the newly-green union, wrote congress recently to warn against a bill authored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski which would prevent the EPA from declaring C02 a danger to public health, saying:

The UAW also is deeply concerned that overturning EPA’s endangerment finding would unravel the historic agreement on one national standard for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions for light-duty vehicles that was negotiated by the Obama administration last year

China has become a world automobile producing and consuming power, but it should also be noted that the industry still lacks core technology and has weak innovative capabilities… This creates hidden dangers for public safety

The closest thing Toyota has given to an explicit accounting of its unintended acceleration woes is the admission that rapid growth detracted from the company’s previously unquestioned commitment to quality. With the Chinese auto market growing even faster than Toyota was, the Chinese Central government is anxious to prevent such nasty side-effects of rapid volume growth from manifesting themselves in the domestic auto industry. And well it should be: with Chinese automakers like BYD poised to launch overseas sales campaigns, the Chinese auto industry is at a crucial stage in developing its international image. China’s Ministry of Information and Technology has released a statement [via DetNews] urging its domestic automakers to heed Toyota’s example, and adopt “new technology, new techniques, new equipment and new materials” to master the balance between profit and quality. And hopefully move past the image of hand-assembled batteries and carbon-copy design while they’re at it. Meanwhile, Toyota is feeling the hurt. Stung by calls by the government to compensate Chinese drivers, Toyota-FAW fell from China’s top ten sales list. Toyota China reported a 30 percent rise in sales in February, but at 45,400 units the firm was still way down from its 72,000 unit January performance.

The House Oversight Committee has obtained a 2006 memo from the “All Toyota Labor Union” (ATU) which alleges quality declines due to “a fall in the number of experienced staff in favor of contract workers, longer working hours and an aggressive pursuit of cost cuts” according to Automotive News [sub]. The letter was originally addressed to then-Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe, and was written during a Japanese criminal investigation of Toyota, in which the automaker was eventually cleared of all charges. In the letter, the 20-member ATU (curiously, only two members of the union work for Toyota Motor Company proper) demanded

a seven-point action plan from management including an explanation of the criminal probe, a review of the length of vehicle development period and a review of cost reduction methodologies