Why I will never buy a Toyota product

Much has been written in the last 90 days about Toyotas, recalls, unintended acceleration, and safety and quality. The Los Angeles Times, for example, has an excellent series of stories they've called "Road to Recall" going over the calamity that is Toyota. Toyota's problems are particularly discomforting for owners given Toyota's previously stellar reputation for quality and reliability, a reputation that Toyota had no qualms charging extra for.

Like anything manufactured by humans, Toyota vehicles are susceptible to flaws. However, while it is inevitable that every product can be brought down by mistakes, it is not inevitable that these mistakes lead to the same train wreck that is now befalling Toyota and its vehicles.

There is most definitely a right way and a wrong way to respond to a crisis and at every turn, Toyota has picked the wrong one.

That said, I now present to you the reasons why I will never buy a Toyota, Lexus, or Scion product

1. PIECEMEAL RECALLS: Various Toyota models are sold in nearly identical form in multiple countries. One would expect then that if a model is recalled, it would be in all countries. Sadly, evidence indicates that Toyota did not do so and instead waited weeks or even years between recalling nearly identical models in separate countries.
   
2. UNDERESTIMATING/TRIVIALIZING THE PROBLEM: Evidence indicates that reports of unintended acceleration came to Toyota's attention as early as 2004. By late 2009, Toyota had enough reports of unintended acceleration to know it was a problem, but it was apparently not enough to warrant a full-fledged recall (1). In other words, Toyota was pulling a Pinto. Lastly, throughout the entire recall mess, Toyota has steadfastly insisted that the unintended acceleration problem is "rare", completely ignoring the fact that it is anything but rare if it happens to you.
   
3. FOCUSING ON PROFIT: On February 21, 2010, an internal Toyota document (dated July 6, 2009) was released in which the company boasted it saved "$100 million" by negotiating with federal regulators to limit the scope of an upcoming recall over unintended acceleration.
4. OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE: Perhaps this is just political posturing, but Henry Waxman (chair of the Congressional committee giving Toyota the screws) accused Toyota of withholding information and relying on flawed studies to dismiss consumer complaints of unintended acceleration. Separately, Congressman Edolphus Towns, head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Toyota "deliberately withheld" evidence in lawsuits related to vehicle safety, exhibiting a "systematic disregard for the law." When read in conjunction with Toyota's handling of the recall thus far -- including an absentee CEO, piecemeal recalls, memos boasting of $100M savings, stuck floormats and gas pedals, and stubborn insistence that the car's electronics are fine -- goes to show you that Toyota really has no fucking idea what it's doing.
   
5. OVERESTIMATING THEIR ABILITY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM: In the US, the first Toyota recall due to unintended acceleration was in or about October 2009 for -- allegedly -- defective floormats that would cause the gas pedal to jam. Does that make sense from a sheer logic perspective? No. First, it seems that a floormat that moves (much less jam the gas pedal) would be very easy to spot. Second, lots of cars have floormats and being low tech devices, it seems to me that there's nothing unusual about Toyota floormats that would cause them to stick/move more than Honda or Ford floormats. Third, the recall was by-country -- meaning, for example, that Camrys made in the US were affected but Camrys made in Japan were not. I'm not an expert in how Toyota makes cars, but it stands to reason that Camrys sold in the US are the same (i.e. same parts), regardless of where they are made. The second recall in mid-January 2010 was over gas pedals that were slow to return after being depressed. On the surface, this seems slightly more logical, except for one small thing: fixing the gas pedal doesn't solve the problem.
   
6. BLATANT STUBBORNNESS AND AN INABILITY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM: Toyota first said that sticking floormats (somehow) caused the unintended acceleration. Three months later, it was sticking accelerator pedals that were the cause (except now it seems like they weren't). During Congressional testimony in late February 2010, Toyota executives even admitted that the recalls would not totally fix the unintended acceleration problem, (to which I would respond "You built the fucking car you imbecile! If you can't fix it, who the fuck else can?"). Despite all this, the one thing Toyota is absolutely sure about is that the unintended acceleration problem is not (emphasize NOT) due to the electronic throttle system that Toyota introduced in many models in or about model year 2002. (By a strange coincidence, reports of unintended acceleration shot up in Toyota models shot up after mechanical throttles were replaced by electronic ones.) Toyota's insisted this even though an automotive professor was able to reproduce the problem by fiddling with the electronic throttle system in a Toyota Avalon.
   
7. RELUCTANCE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY: In February 2010, as the problems with Toyota vehicles increased, Congress decided to hold a public hearing. If you saw the hearings, you know that Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda was there and gave testimony with the help of interpreters. It wasn't always this way, though: Up until the last minute, CEO Toyoda was not going to appear before Congress, insisting instead that US-based Toyota executives could handle it. Toyoda's hands-off approach to this entire recall matter (including his grammatically-challenged apology) is also telling (i.e. it tells Toyota's customers that the company doesn't give a rat's ass), but it is possible at least some of Toyoda's reluctance may be due to cultural issues.

As in any endeavor (life, law, business ,etc) a judgment that is based on the totality of the circumstance is likely to be more representative of the truth than one based on a singularity. What does the Toyota mess (so far) tell us? The vehicles themselves are well-engineered and reliable 95% of the time. If Toyota would pull its head of its proverbial corporate ass and be open and honest to the same degree they've been stubborn and shifty, then the remaining 5% would have been dealt with long ago.

As a start, for example, here are several things Toyota could have done to handle this recall, but did not as far as I know.

1. Setup a 1(800) number where consumers could get information on whether their car was recalled.
   
2. Create a website with videos detailing the problem and what work has been done on a day-by-day basis to solve the problem. This strikes me as a much better way to handle any recall than to leave your customers high and dry with nothing but "We are working hard to solve the problem" to comfort them.
   

Good to hear that the other auto companies capitalized on Toyota's misfortune by offering customers a whopping $1,000 to trade in a recalled Toyota model. And so exemplifies rule 2 of business: kick your opponent when he's down.