Last November, Suzuki received a fuel leakage complaint on three cars in Europe and one in India. Suzuki did what Suzuki was required to do: Send owners of the “A-Star” (A.K.A, Suzuki Alto, Nissan Pixo) an invitation to go to their dealer and have the fuel pump fixed. As usual, this story received next to no media attention. In the years BT (before Toyota,) who cared about a yet another recall?

That was then, this is AT. Today, someone said “Suzuki has a recall” on the floor of the New Delhi stock exchange. Holy cow! Read More >

Japanese sales of new cars and trucks continue their solid comeback in February. Japan has filed away carmageddon. Japan is utterly unimpressed by the Toyota troubles. Japan has not been spared Toyota recalls. The hearings and public apologies have received wide coverage in Japan. And what is the Japanese reaction? A plus 47.9 percent vote of confidence. With the currently very tight Japanese wallets. There is a long waiting list for the Prius, Toyota’s best selling car. [Editor’s note: Japan is currently in the throes of its own Cash-for-Clunker prgram]

Also interesting: Sales of minivehicles, formerly feted as the future, are barely holding their own, whereas sales of “real” cars continue their double digit climb. Let’s look at the numbers: Read More >

Let’s make something very clear: This is not a post about Toyota. We are not advocating or accusing any brand. This is a post about a phenomenon called sudden unintended acceleration. An American phenomenon, as it seems at first glance. To get to the bottom of it, we need your help.

MarkKyle64 asked an interesting question during the discussion of TTAC’s NHTSA Data Dive: 95 Cars Ranked In Rate Of Unintended Acceleration Complaints:

”Can TTAC find out, for example, if German drivers report lower levels of UA than American drivers?”

I tried to. In an admittedly unscientific way. I had no other choice. Read More >

Call it the ultimate of ironies. Yesterday afternoon I headed to the Toyota dealer in my 2005 Toyota Scion xB for the purpose of shooting photographs of various Toyota gas pedals to see why certain models seemed to have a higher rate of UA complaints to the NHTSA. In search of some intended acceleration, I headed up the up-hill I-105 connector on-ramp at Washington Street at full throttle. As I lifted my foot off the accelerator pedal, it stayed wide open… Read More >

A quiet Sunday. Time to fire up Google and put in “Toyota AND [cause OR reason].” We come up with ample explanations why Toyota is not called Toyoda.  Or why Peiping turned into Peking, and then into Beijing. What about the causes of sudden acceleration? Let’s see what we find. (If you have other things to do on a  Sunday: We find a lot of questions and no answers.) Read More >

As a car company, closing out 2009 with a profit is a commendable feat. Generally, you count yourself amongst the blessed if you are still alive (or bailed-out by friendly governments.) Let’s look at two companies that made money in 2009. At least, at some time in 2009. Read More >

The Obama Administration warns that automakers could be hit with unintended acceleration of  their costs if Congress succeeds in blocking EPA greenhouse gas emissions. The Detroit News reports:

In a letter to congressional leaders, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s chief counsel, O. Kevin Vincent, said Congress would jeopardize a deal reached by automakers, California and the White House if it blocks the EPA from using its power to limit greenhouse gases.

California and a dozen states could go forward, each with its own rules, if Congress blocks EPA from setting national standards. That would have the impact of “creating confusion, encouraging renewed litigation, and driving up the cost of compliance to automobile manufacturers and consumers alike,” Vincent wrote.

Read More >

A number of articles have appeared implicating tin whiskers as a potential source or complicating factor in Toyota’s (and other manufacturers’) unintended acceleration issues. The phenomenon of tin whiskers, a crystalline metallurgical phenomenon involving the spontaneous growth of tiny, filiform hairs from a metallic surface, can cause short circuits and arcing in electric equipment. First discovered in phone switching equipment in the 1940’s, the addition of lead to tin solder largely eliminated the problem. But the push to eliminate lead from electronic assemblies has led to a nasty re-growth of the pesky whiskers. And some are pointing fingers. Read More >

Toyota may record “a double-digit drop in the automaker’s U.S. sales for February,” says The Nikkei [sub] today. The Nikkei bolsters the assessment with interviews at dealerships in the U.S.A., but knowing the Nikkei, a sales droid in northern California is not their only source.

The Nikkei notes that “Toyota was the only major automaker to suffer a double-digit sales decline in the U.S. last month. Its sales were down 15.8 percent from a year earlier, compared with the 24.4 percent and 14.6 percent growth enjoyed by Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co..”

A continuation of this trend would be extremely dangerous for Toyota. We are comparing with the absolutely worst times of carmageddon, and if you are double digits below carmageddon, you roast in hell. Read More >

[Update 3: This post is now officially obsolete, having been supplanted by the much more accurate update here]

[Update 2: In a new post, I have noted that 53% of Toyota UA complaints were filed after the mat advisory was issued on 9/29/09. The number used her are not adjusted for that. As soon as they are available, I will redo this spreadsheet, using more accurate sales stats]

[Update ans Disclaimer: As I noted below, this spreadsheet will be updated when I can access actual sales stats from our source, Morgan and Co. on Monday for the years (’05-’10) covered. That will very likely change the rankings somewhat. The Lincoln may actually be #2. But this is not about which car is #1 or #2; it’s about finding patterns in certain makes, and within makes. It’s an attempt to see if these statistics can shed light on a complex and opaque issue. As an example, why the Toyota Yaris is so low in reported incidents. It’s more about these patterns and discrepancies, than about singling out the car with the highest rate, so please don’t take the current exact rankings as the final word. It’s a work in progress. The fact that the complaints are not tabulated by individual MY also limits this substantially, as running changes in a given car during the five year period will change things significantly. So this data dive is fundamentally flawed; take it as such. But nevertheless, it’s still a huge step over the raw data that Edmunds put out, which doesn’t begin to account for the number of any given cars sold.]

Numbers and statistics are largely useless without context. Edmunds.com took a first good step in going through NHTSA’s data base and reporting the number of UA events reported per make, brand and vehicle. But what was obviously missing was the correlation to the number of cars on the road in relation to those numbers. We’ve taken the next (tedious) step, and the results are most interesting indeed. They’re certainly not completely conclusive, but we’re not finished yet. The full list of 95 cars follows, as well as our methodology, a stab at some analysis, and more questions to still be answered. Read More >

The Trooper II deserves some serious respect and love. It was among the very first, perhaps the very first of the “compact” SUVs that took the US market by storm in the eighties. It was eminently practical, durable, rugged, and good looking. And it’s one of the cars on the list that I wish I had bought. Did it have any faults? Probably, but as far as I’m concerned, someone should still be making this Trooper. Read More >

Surprisingly good news out of Japan: Seemingly unimpeded by the Toyota-bashing, production of cars, trucks and buses in Japan increased 30.7 percent on year in January. Output is up for the third consecutive month, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said today via The Nikkei [sub]. Vehicle output rose to 753,773 vehicles in January from 576,539 vehicles in the same month a year earlier.

Even better fared Japan’s exports of cars, trucks and buses: Exports shot up 45.6 percent from a year earlier in January, the first rise in 16 months, says The Nikkei [sub] in a separate report. “Shipments to key markets such as Asia, Europe and” – gasp – “North America increased in line with recovering auto demand.” To this embedded observer, it seems as if the jobs created by this brouhaha are in Japan.

Let’s see what the next month brings, especially in the U.S. Awfully little, predicts Reuters. Read More >

While America gets a Lexus-badged Toyota Sai as our first entry-premium hybrid car, the Europeans will get this CT200h instead. In addition to better differentiation from the Prius (to this blogger, the HS250h smacks of old Buick-style brand engineering), the CT200h is said to be more driver-focused than previous Toyota hybrids. But then, we Americans are all used to not getting the smaller, tauter, hatchback-ier models by now, right? Right?

[Editor’s note: Please join us today at 3pm Eastern (noon Pacific) for a livechat with the authors of Carjacked: The Culture Of The Automobile And Its Effects On Our Lives]

Over the last several weeks, the Toyota recall scandal has reopened the national discussion about car ownership, raising new questions about the role of personal responsibility in our relationships with automobiles. Here at TTAC, we’ve argued passionately that a major lesson of the Toyota recall is that consumers can not rely on brand reputation or the assumption that cars will always work as we expect them to in order to protect ourselves and our families. But responsible car ownership doesn’t end there. To maintain a functioning relationship with our cars, it’s important that motorists understand that the vehicles we cherish come with high costs. And anyone who thinks that the awesome power of the private automobile doesn’t come with great responsibilities would do well to read through the relentless documentation of these costs that makes up the book Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect On Our Lives.
Read More >

Key quote: “What I have done is, I have shown that in the fault detection strategy of the Toyota systems, there’s a window of opportunity where [an error] could occur and not be detected.”