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…)

To the victor go the spoils. Who will be the victors, and how much spoilage will be there in the protracted Toyota battle? Of course, this is all in the name of safety and the children, and any sales dislocations will be unfortunate collateral damage. Really.

As optimistic as Toyota might want to be, over the next few months, their sales will decrease. They already do decrease.  “Toyota’s US sales tumbled 16 per cent in January from a year earlier and are set to record another hefty fall this month,” reports Financial Times. Stoppage of deliveries and production, topped by a media onslaught, can have that effect.

Maybe Toyota’s ideas of an increased warranty and more incentives will work, long term, but in the short term, they’d better prepare themselves for negative numbers at the end of each month ahead.

As the first law of thermodynamics infers, energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transposed. If customers are leaving Toyota, they don’t just disappear like Toyota‘s reputation for reliability China’s interest in US debt, they have to go somewhere. So where will they? (Read More…)

Do you think being the scion of a global brand is easy? Well think again, it’s hard work. No-one knows this more than Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford. So, when Akio Toyoda got thrown into a quality nightmare, Bill Ford empathised with the fellow (and currently not so great) grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, the one who had founded Toyota. Bill feels for Akio, in the family way. (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…)

With Congress already investigating a possible Toyota unintended acceleration cover-up, the NHTSA has decided that it should probably be getting a piece of the action, and has invoked its statutory power to request documents relating to when Toyota learned of the defects involved in its recent gas pedal recall and how it reacted to them. Federal law requires that manufacturers notify the NHTSA within five days of discovering a safety defect, reports the Wall Street Journal [sub]. The WSJ [sub] also notes that Toyota is offering to disclose new details about its crisis response task force (which reportedly includes “outside quality experts”), as the world’s largest automaker struggles to respond to a rash of recalls that has affected over 8m vehicles worldwide and will cost the company at least $2b. CEO Akio Toyoda will hold his third recall-related press conference in two weeks on Wednesday evening to disclose these details and more on the company’s plans to boost testing and transparency. According to yet another WSJ [sub] report, those measures are said to include less reliance on computer modeling in vehicle design, improved consumer feedback capabilities and more stringent testing of supplier-designed parts.

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…)

According to popular wisdom, the flood of recalls will change Toyota and will permanently damage Toyota’s market share in the United States (much like what happened to Mitsubishi and their cover up scandal). But there are some people who believe (like I do) that this is “man bites dog” journalism. That the Toyota recall (whilst serious) is being blown out of proportion. It seems that other people are starting to see it that way.

US Recall News‘ reason for being is recalls. They would be dead without recalls. US Recall News has written an article that says that the real recall bogeyman doesn’t live in Toyota City, but in Detroit. The identity of the true bogeyman’s name may surprise some. (Read More…)

“The American people are willing to forgive and forget, but they would like a little gift,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson tells Toyota [via USAToday]. Toyota’s answer (other than possible warranty extensions): a nice, dull little facelift for a nice, dull little cute ute. Meanwhile, Toyota’s US dealers are not thrilled with the state of affairs, gifting Automotive News [sub] such saucy quotes as:

Dealers will be talking [at the NADA convention] about how this will affect their investments as a dealer. You bet I am questioning my investment. I think they have handled this poorly.

And that was the quote that didn’t feature expletives! Will the softroader update (shown here in European spec) tame the angry beast that is Toyota’s dealer network? Given that it’s only being shown in Europe until “later this year,” the answer seems to be “not for now.”

Toyota are facing many lawsuits for unintended acceleration which may have (or not, you never know what law firm is reading this site!) caused the deaths of many people. However, let’s hope Emily Harris doesn’t get litigious.

London’s Daily Express reports that the 19 year old from the UK was refused her driving test, which left her a crying wreck. The reason? The examiner would not go in Miss Harris’s car. It was a Toyota Aygo. (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…)

As we fumble towards a more complete understanding of Toyota’s stunning fall from grace, we’ve only uncovered a single class of people who truly stand to benefit from the last several weeks of hysteria: the lawyers, of course. Thanks to Toyota’s deep reserves of cash, every single possible damage incurred in the last several weeks will be picked over for an opportunity to sue the world’s largest automaker, and already the suits have crossed over into the realm of the absurd. Automotive News [sub] reports on latest class-action suit charge against Toyota, which seeks damages from the automaker for diminished resale value and lost use of recalled vehicles. These charges have been filed as class-action suits in “at least 30 states,” and lawyers suggest that the damages could run as high as $2b. Ford paid Explorer owners $500 a piece when it settled similar class-action suits in the wake of its Firestone safety scandal.

(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…)