The Real Scandal Behind the Toyota Recall
Fuzzy findings, media manipulation, and tort lawyers scare the public and destroy millions in shareholder and resale value, writes Ed Wallace
This article shows that when someone has an agenda they manipulate the truth to make it fit. Then when the public has half the information, they start making assumptions and you know what happens when you ASSUME.
Here are some quotes from the article:
" I called a few respected local Toyota (TM) dealers in the Dallas area to ask a simple question: "In the past 10 years, how many Toyotas have come into your service department with the complaint of unintended acceleration?"The answer I got again and again? "None.""
"A Trip Down Audi Memory Lane
What's ominous is that the Audi 5000 case seems to have set the example for how stories concerning serious defects in automobiles would be covered in the future.
Yes, there were people on TV (and in newspaper articles) who swore that their Audis, too, had become possessed and uncontrollable, and there's little doubt that they sincerely believed what they said. That does not alter the fact they were mistaken": In time, our government painstakingly tested every "possessed car," and no causative defect was ever found."
"The Audi case seems to have foreshadowed a scenario occurring now with Toyota."
" Turns out the Audi official had been correct: The cars did not have any known defect"
"Toyota looked into the complaints covering brakes on its hybrid electric Prius. While no real problem was found, Toyota did issue a recall to update the computer codes.
And just for the record: Many antilock brake systems feel as if they are skipping or failing to take hold quickly when engaged suddenly on bumpy roads."
"Firestone's Firestorm
In some ways this case is little different from the Ford-Firestone fiasco of a decade ago. When Lea Thompson with Dateline NBC lifted up a Firestone tire's torn and separated tread for the camera, few viewers noticed that particular tire had almost no tread left. Old tires without treads often fail."
"The Auto Industry Hall of Shame
Automotive history should have a Hall of Infamy for scandals like this next one—the 1988 story involving Consumer Reports. The magazine's "investigation" of rollover problems it "found" while reviewing the Suzuki Samurai focused intense media coverage on a nonevent, destroying not just a vehicle but nearly its manufacturer."
"Consumer Reports' raw video and its test drivers'"" took the Suzuki Samurai through its paces 16 times, some runs going in excess of 50 miles an hour, without ever once lifting the vehicle's wheels off the ground. Sheehan wrote in his notes: "Easy to control … Never felt it would tip over.""
"one eyewitness claimed to have heard""If you can't find someone to roll this car, I will."
"Sales of the Suzuki Samurai fell from 83,314 units to just 5,031 after the Consumer Reports story ran";
"Now it's Toyota's turn. They investigated the complaints, found a number of small problems and said that's the only problems they could find, and moved relatively fast to fix those issues. "
