Everybody promised this would not be a repeat of the Japan bashing of the 80s. But when the DetN starts outing lawmakers and administrators in DC for driving Toyotas, then it’s open season. Let them dawgs out …

“The vaunted Toyota Prius is everywhere in Washington,” reports the breathless Detroit News after exhaustive traffic analysis. (Read More…)

Public and politicians in Japan are not enthused about Toyota’s latest utterings, especially at yesterday’s news conference. “At home, fiercely loyal Japanese drivers are wondering how a firm with a deserved reputation for quality and reliability could allow substandard vehicles to slip through its vaunted quality-control apparatus,” reports the Christian Science Monitor from Toyko. The natives are getting restless … (Read More…)

“Toyota is considering halting production at its factory at Burnaston, near Derby, because of collapsing sales amid the car company’s recall crisis,” London’s Times reports.

This comes on the heels of reported plans to shut two down two plants in the United States for a total of 14 days. According to the Times, Toyota is “reviewing production at its European factories.”

Toyotas recall led to “a collapse in sales for the world’s largest carmaker,” as the Times put it. (Read More…)

The MSM is abuzz with a rash of fresh (well, not really) deaths-by-Toyota. According to an Associated Press report (this one via Twincities.com,) “complaints of deaths connected to sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles have surged in recent weeks, with the alleged death toll reaching 34 since 2000.” In the past three weeks alone, people told the NHTSA about nine crashes involving 13 alleged deaths between 2005 and 2010 due to accelerator problems. Without the heightened awareness, those people would have passed away unnoticed. Other fatalities loom: (Read More…)

Here’s something positive you may get out of the Toyota recall debacle: Cash on the hood and a Hyundai-like warranty. Reuters says that Toyota is discussing a range of options with its U.S. dealers to support sales.

Toyota already gives a $1,000 “loyalty bonus” to match monies offered by GM, Ford, Chrysler and Hyundai to Toyota customers who want to abandon their brand. Toyota is now thinking to pay a total of $2000 to returning Toyota customers, an anonymous source told Reuters. If this turns into a bidding war … (Read More…)

The Toyota case is heading towards hearings in DC and to courts all over the country. Both sides are putting heavy artillery in position. Both sides of the SUA wars commission heavy caliber studies – both with inconclusive results. Toyota funded a study into the electronics in its vehicles. Before that, a group of lawyers had “sponsored” Safety Research and Strategies, a company that makes money by investigating auto-safety for those suing auto makers. Ford, which had been at the receiving end of an SRS fusillade during the Explorer crisis, called the company “supposed safety advocates who are actually just shills for trial attorneys.”

Here are the latest dispatches from the front lines: (Read More…)

Don’t bogart that joint: Toyota will recall about 8,000 model-year 2010 Tacoma pickup trucks in the US. Not for unintended acceleration, or brake gremlins, but for good old cracks in the joint portion of the drive shaft, says Reuters. The front drive shafts are manufactured by Dana Holding Corp, and the affected vehicles were produced from mid-December 2009 to early February. (Read More…)

In that Wolfsburg car factory I had the honor to work for for more than 30 years, one of the many pearls of wisdom was: “Wenn man nicht mehr weiter weiss, gründet man nen Arbeitskreis.” If you are totally out of options, establish a committee.

Toyota seems to have taken that Teutonic haiku to heart. The Nikkei reports that Toyota Motor “has formed an expert panel, chaired by President Akio Toyoda, to analyze the potential risks throughout its global production and sales networks.”

As far as committees go, lean it won’t be. It will be a monster of a committee: “The president will be joined by executives ranked senior managing director and higher,” The Nikkei writes. ”The committee’s composition will change depending on the type and locality of a particular problem, and input from lawyers and consultants will be sought as warranted.”

For added redundancy, Toyota established a second committee. (Read More…)

In the let’s-do-something-anything dept., Toyota engineers are now re-jigging the keyless ignition button, reports Das Autohaus in Germany. According to a Toyota corporate spokesperson, the re-jigged button will cut the engine when the button is pressed three times in rapid succession. (Read More…)

Click to enrage … we mean, enlarge

According to the MSM and many on-line pundits, the NHTSA has been drowning in customer complaints about Toyotas for years. Supposedly, the warnings were thrown in the wind.

Edmunds went through the pain of sifting through NHTSA’s complaint database from 2001 through Feb. 3, 2010 . After the counting was done, Edmunds came to a startling conclusion: The deluge of complaints is a myth, to put it charitably. “Fabrication” would be a better word. Amongst 20 brands, “Toyota ranks 17th among automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold,” says Edmunds. NHTSA’s own data shows: Only drivers of Mercedes Benz, Porsches and Smarts have less to kvetch than Toyota owners. (Read More…)

Yesterday, a strange love-fest between U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos and Japan’s transport minister Seiji Maehara ensued. After their meeting in Tokyo, as reported by the Nikkei, the ambassador and the minister said that everything is hunky-dory, and that Toyota’s recent recalls won’t undermine relations between the U.S.A. and Japan. Which is odd in itself: Since when does a $15 gas pedal get a leading role on the world stage of international politics?

Ambassador Roos effusively told reporters that the recall issue ”in no way has any kind of direct or indirect impact on the strength of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Japan.” Who said it would? (Read More…)

Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda was already getting ready to “visit the United States over massive recalls of its vehicles,” reported the Nikkei [sub]. Japan’s transport minister Seiji Maehara told U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos that Toyoda would be dispatched to DC. There, he would be ready to  “explain the recall problems to the U.S. Congress if asked.” (Read More…)

Every year, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry hands out prizes for products it regards as the pinnacle of energy-efficiency and eco-friendliness. This year, Toyota’s Prius was chosen as the recipient of the grand prize.

Last Monday, Toyota said “enryo shimasu” (no thanks) to the Ministry, and refused to accept the governmental honors, an industry ministry official disclosed today to the Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

Honda said it will recall another roughly 378,000 vehicles in the U.S. to fix potentially faulty airbag systems that are linked to at least one known fatality and 11 injuries in the U.S., says the Nikkei [sub].

That brings the number of airbag-related recalled Honda and Acura models to more than 826,000. Honda said some airbags in its older vehicles deploy with too much pressure, and send metal fragments flying into the car. (Read More…)

The Japanese government is getting increasingly worried that the Toyota debacle might turn into a worldwide backlash against Japanese cars, or even all Japanese products. As the world’s 4^th largest export nation, Japan has a lot to worry about.

Today, large parts of the Japanese cabinet came down hard on Toyota, says the Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)