The LA Times reports that “more than 100 suits seeking class-action status, as well as at least 50 personal injury cases” against Toyota have been consolidated to a single courtroom, under the jurisdiction of U.S. District Judge James Selna. According to Reuters, the ruling by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation did state that:
We are initially persuaded that the centralized proceedings should eventually include the related personal injury and wrongful death actions
In September of 2007, Jim Press surprised the automotive world by leaving Toyota to become president of Chrysler LLC. Press, the first non-Japanese member of the Toyota board of directors, was generally considered to be a major factor in Toyota’s North American success, and his move still has people scratching their heads. It’s been generally assumed that Chrysler’s then owner, Cerberus, promised him a big pile of money. That assumption seems to be reinforced by Press’ inability to pay $1.35 million in debt and taxes last September, which he attributed to bonuses not received due to Chrysler’s meltdown. Still, regardless of the merits of working for the strugling Auburn Hills automaker, leaving Toyota in the first place seemed like a poor career choice. Read More >
Eleven Nanos were puttering down India’s National Highway 8 on their way to the dealer (don’t they have car haulers there?) when one of them burst into flames, reports India’s Deccan Chronicle. These cases of spontaneous Nano combustion seem to pile up. Read More >
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.
From the unintended consequences dept. comes yet another humdinger. Some keep saying the recent Toyota spat was intended to put the Japanese competition in its place. Instead, it ups the competitiveness of Korean and Chinese auto makers, says The Nikkei [sub]. Read More >
Cadillac contracted the services of the Ritz-Carlton to train Cadillac dealers to provide 5-star service. The Ritz Carlton, first recipient of the Baldridge award in 1999, has a side business in training other companies to provide quality service.
Don Butler, Cadillac’s marketing VP, said to Automotive News [sub] that the program will emphasize customer treatment rather than facilities. For instance, he said, a dealership employee might take an umbrella and walk a customer out to his or her car when it’s raining. “It’s simple,” Butler said. “It’s the things that don’t cost a lot of money.” If he would only know. Read More >
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?
Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words, but this one is good for at least two whole life lessons. First: you get what you pay for. If you buy the world’s cheapest car, as insurance agent Satish Sawant did, it might just burst into flames on the drive home from the dealership. Second: Google Adsense has no sense of irony.
Black box data in New York and Japan shows that crashing Prius drivers had their feet on the wrong pedals and wrongly blamed their cars.
In Harrison, NY, the NHTSA declared that the cause of the Prius incident was driver error. “Computer data from a Toyota Prius that crashed in suburban New York City show that at the time of the accident the throttle was open and the driver was not applying the brakes,” U.S. safety officials said to Associated Press.
NHTSA said information from the car’s computer systems indicates there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open. The NHTSA “did not elaborate,” says AP, but the conclusions are clear: Someone’s foot was on the gas instead on the brakes. Read More >
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.
Toyota is a customer centric company. It now considers a recall that will please the vociferous crowd that thinks something is wrong with Toyota’s engine computer. Reuters reports that Toyota is discussing with NHTSA whether and how they should fix nearly 1.2 million Corolla and Matrix models. They are at risk of unintended stoppage. They might stall out because of flaws in their computer. Read More >
Volkswagen may be much closer to its goal of surpassing Toyota as the world’s largest automaker. In an exclusive interview with The Nikkei [sub], Akio Toyoda said, Toyota will make its top priority the quality, not the number of the cars it makes.
So far, VW wanted to subjugate Toyota by 2018. But Toyota has decided to go slow. Said Toyoda-san: Read More >
All eyes are on Harrison, NY, today. Technicians from Toyota and NHTSA will head to the NYC burbs and pour over a 2005 Toyota Prius that crashed into a stone wall in the tony bedroom town of Harrison. Its driver claimed the hybrid had sped up on its own. Toyota will read out the data recorded in the Prius computer. According to the Associated Press, Toyota techs will “use equipment to determine how many times the driver hit the brakes and gas. It used the same tools earlier this week to cast doubt on a California driver who claimed his Prius sped to 94 mph before a patrol officer helped him stop it.” Read More >
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.
Thinking about a Dodge Neon racking up 500k miles is a bit like imagining Britney Spears celebrating a golden wedding anniversary. Dodge Neons just don’t come to mind when thinking about hi-mileage cars. But with a bit of dedication and understanding, cars with a rep seem to run forever for the right owner. Here’s a 1998 Dodge Neon R/T (no less) with 446,000 miles on it, and that was last July. And that’s with the original engine, no less, in case you were wondering. OK, there is a bit of a secret to the owners’ success: it’s their sixth Neon, so they’re familiar with all their hidden warts. Read More >
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