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Let's Get This Straight... My Take on Toyota
I've been tickled with glee to report to you the mess that is the Toyota recall fiasco. I like cars, I like Zero Hedge. To quote Borat- "I like you... I like sex..." and I'm so enthused that many of our readers are engaged in making comments... But some of them, particularly comments from that very popular, very busy fellow/gal "Anonymous," well... Lets clear things up.
(I'm not going to bother quoting or referring to "Anonymous," them, the comments, if they don't have a proper name associated with them... I mean; if a tree falls in the forrest and no one is around, does it make a sound?)
I don't "have it out" for nor do I "have it in" for Toyota in any way. Nor am I defending them, nor do I support them.
I don't own, nor have I ever, a Toyota product. I find them bland and boring but I respect their reputation. A million American drivers can't be wrong for well over 20 years- trust me. They're decent cars.
You have to admit- you must think twice now when it comes to Toyota's reputation as a car and a company. If you don't, you're dumber than you comment.
Every car company has recalls- dozens of them a year, if not hundreds of them over the course of time, and they mostly fall under the radar... Maybe they make the nightly news- once. That's it. You only hear about them when they send you those annoying sealed letters in the mail- and you fuck-up tearing off the tabs as prescribed on the letters in fine print, in simple black and white.
But you cannot help but marvel how frothy a fiasco all these probes, investigations and inquiries against Toyota have become.
You cannot deny that there is way more than meets the eye here.
Also, being our beloved ZH has its roots in a particular book and a subsequent movie named thereafter... (Remember the rules... do we really have to say it?) Well, lets not forget this:
Our favorite movie... Fight Club:
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
Words and sequence courtesy of IMDB.com.
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Personally I thought Honda’s “metal in the air bags” was more of a concern but we own 2 Toyota's so I maybe bias
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8507450.stm
Toyota...quality control used to be the stuff of legends...Americans never came close... This whole thing seems to be a media attack on Toyota ....
Imagine how many cars the big 3 will now selll. Mountain out of a molehill...
It’s funny how the US government owns GM and Chrysler and they are all getting glowing reviews but Toyota's recall can’t get out of the news.
What it called when thing add up a little to easily?
.....Coincidence
But I digress I maybe a little of a conspiracy theorist.
I have nothing against TM either. But my brother works for a dealer and told me 5 years ago that TM quality was declining. Now quality decline doesn't mean they've become deadly but you would have to expect the probability of something going massively wrong (financial) had increased. The timing couldn't have been worse for TM and better for F and GM (the jury is out on C). The must have know the quality was declining (if they didn't they shouldn't be running a car company) and decided to gamble. Well, sort of like the sandpile game........you never know which grain of sand is going to bring down the whole pile.
Chrysler is still a zombie, a dead man walking. And GM is still standing only because of the levitation act that Bernanke is putting on for the rest of the economy. When gravity wins over Bernanke, and it will, GM will crash and burn. While I have no great love for Ford, they may be the last American car company.
As for quality problems at Toyota, that is completely believable and is one of the most common problems of any company that expands too fast. The bigger question will be how will Toyota respond to these quality issues? Will it become another GM, focused on slop and style over function, performance, and safety? Or will they learn from the failures of GM?
For those who are old enough, two words,
Ford, Pinto
IF it turns out that the acceleration problem is really an electronic problem with the electronic throttle control, then you can put a fork in toyota for about the next five years.
Agreed, My prediction for Chrysler is that by the end of the first quarter FY2011, that you will see a collapse, with no possibility of an IPO. Chrysler may still be called Chrysler, but it will really be a shadow of its former self, called baby Fiat. So the dealerships will read FIAT CHRYSLER. We wasted a lot of tax payer money to just forstall the rate of collapse.
Well how is GM doing? Who knows? Ron Bloom perhaps, or maybe he is just being spoon fed from GM. After all they just recalled Henderson as a consultant, what? Very strange. I can say that GM is gutted spiratually and has no real focus, other than thrying to survive until a plausible IPO.
Ford has been able to cut costs, but at the expense of engineering and design. The company is hollow. Its easy to reduce staff, not so easy in building product teams.
Mark Beck
Greyzone:
Our experience creates our biases. But from personal experience I like GM. I have had new cars from all of the "big three" through the years. Comparison accuracy suffers from the fact that I have tended to keep them for quite awhile so they come from different eras and they are from different cost levels. But, that said, my experience has been unquestionably better with the GM product than the others. Since 1984, it has been Oldsmobile and Buick. The last three primary family cars have been Buick LeSaber with the firm ride and interior package. From about 8 years of fuel records the current version gets 24.5 MPG summer and 23.4 winter. The reliability has been good. It did need a new torque converter at 98,000 covered by a $1,700 extended warranty bought when the car was new. Otherwise, nothing significant except expendables. (Tires and a special battery that was expensive enough.) Been waiting for GM to work through their problems before buying again. I will be driving it a little longer until I see how the Buick brand is actually doing with the big talking Texas CEO running things.
I have long felt that the assertion that the assertion that GM produces a bad product was a bum rap. My brother-in-law in Chicago has a Lexus. He had the joy of a hydraulic brake line rupture a couple of months ago. He was working through Chicago traffic using his emergency brake. From long experience on the litigious American scene, IMO, the domestic auto people work very hard to be sure that things that potentially cause serious injury or loss of life don’t happen during the normal auto lifetime.
Another issue is living and driving where there is cold and snow. The big three are very aware of that market and do design to serve it. Ask a Canadian about that. Sometimes the address of one operational issue creates design awkwardness in other areas.
Right now, the domestic auto makers are working hard on new combustion technologies with active valve components for combustion fine tuning; things like turbochargers and improved transmissions to better match the torque/rpm curves with power demand. The upside is better fuel economy with snappy performance; the downside is more components and new components with attendant reliability issues.
Caddy, No. IMO, historically GM has tended to “field test” their new technologies in Cadillac an cover the failures with very attentive field service.
Another issue is living and driving where there is cold and snow. The big three are very aware of that market and do design to serve it
Unless you count GM's use of self-eating chrome plating on the wheels, and the placement of environmental sensors where water can easily foul them up.
Caddy, No. IMO, historically GM has tended to “field test” their new technologies in Cadillac an cover the failures with very attentive field service.
Thought that was Oldsmobile's role when it still existed.
I am fucking sick and tired of this Toyota shit. I own a 2006 Toyota Corolla and I love it. The car works. I would buy another one if I had to. Toyota is a great fucking car, Period.
+1
Must be terrible to be poor.
(kidding)
no shit tm reputation is tarnished wtf was the purpose of this post.
Toyota should close up shop in the USA and see how America likes that outcome.
Then we get to see how badly the Chinese immigrants get on building Japanese Toyotas.
"You have to admit- you must think twice now when it comes to Toyota's reputation as a car and a company. If you don't, you're dumber than you comment."
I wonder if I'll have to think twice in 8 and 14 years respectively? That's when my current Toyotas are scheduled to hit 300K like my previous 2 Toyotas.
"But you cannot help but marvel how frothy a fiasco all these probes, investigations and inquiries against Toyota have become."
With UAW investment in O, not really. They are getting a great ROI on that investment from bashing Toyota to exemption of Cadillac health insurance plans.
+1
Same here. We get 300k out of the cars. Just oil changes and regular maintenance. The administration needs someone to whip on. A foreign company, like Chrysler, just won't do!
Consider all the trucks and truck-body Astro/Safari's still out on the road which are well over 200k, some 300k+.
Never mind how many Crown Victorias are out there on the road that are fleet cars for a very good reason.
Perhaps Toyota should try building further north than Kentucky, build more than just golfcart cars, and stop with the permatemp games.
The American cars will last that long. But they cost much, much more to repair and maintain. The Japanese build a very reliable simple car. I cannot speak about the complex models. I fix my own. The wear rate on a machine is proportionate to the number of moving parts and the speed at which they are operated. Less parts, less wear. Let's see you find a simple GM? I'd buy one just to see if the same fit and finish was there.
Toyota definitely is guilty of, at the very least, averting their eyes from what they should have recognized as signs of a larger problem. There is no excuse for that. But what other automaker has halted manufacturing and sales to concentrate on fixing a problem, once acknowledged? Given my (limited) knowledge of Japanese culture, I expect a shock wave of shame is echoing through the company culture, from boardroom to factory floor, effecting more anything Congress does. Also I wonder how a similar situation will be handled if it happens to one of our GSCCs (Government Supported Car Companies).
It is affecting a large segment of Japanese. Even those who have nothing to do with Toyota. Embarrassment in front of the world and anger at Toyota. That said, the way the Obama administration is demonizing Toyota has not gone un-noticed either.
NPR last week: Toyota showrooms are busy with people looking for good deals. I smell propaganda -- much like, "things are getting better".
a whopper, eh? Good for you.
The script fragment quoted above reads like an exercise in grim humor. But it closely follows the logic outlined in the famous "Pinto memo."
it go boom
I own two Toyotas and those two replaced two other Toyotas - none of which have been recalled (as of yet). When we bought the newest one last March, we wanted a mid-sized SUV as a replacement for a 2002 Highlander. There were just too many SUV models to choose from. I'm the first one to want a vehicle to be exactly what I want, but it was confusing to decide. I can only imagine what the plethora of models does to the design staff, supply chain and assembly tooling - which has come home to roost in the end product.
<Why does friggin' captcha ask questions that require 4 digit answers when it only allows 3 digits!>
<Why does friggin' captcha ask questions that require 4 digit answers when it only allows 3 digits!>
It wants to see how you will handle a classic no-win Kobayashi Maru scenario.
It also is no respecter of "same, add opposite."
It's all in the wrist.
WGAF - if this is fight club you don't drive a new car. Look where you live, Tyler. Are those pipes still dripping? The controversy is a result of the typical whine from the beaten US automaker...Barry we gave you $X mil so let's get some return on that investment...we have to clear out some inventory and get our guys back to work. Like lead on Chinese toys, it'll work. The first rule in Trade War is you don't talk about it.
WGAF - if this is fight club you don't drive a new car. Look where you live, Tyler. Are those pipes still dripping? The controversy is a result of the typical whine from the beaten US automaker...Barry we gave you $X mil so let's get some return on that investment...we have to clear out some inventory and get our guys back to work. Like lead on Chinese toys, it'll work. The first rule in Trade War is you don't talk about it.
Just got back from the Autoshow here in ChiTown.
American designers got their MoJo back and were much more exciting than most of the imports within the same price range.
Just saying.
Suimasen. You dropped your pom-pom.
You cannot deny that there is way more than meets the eye here.
There is, now go look at the USA MIL/Japan deals. The % of Toyotas that have defects is very low versus Chrysler or GMC that have problems/defects. Remember Ford's cruise control, it burned down hundreds of vehicles as i recall.
And Chrysler, what a nearly total POS that barely lasts past their warranty period... and Chrysler would not lemon law a bad car my ex-g had in the shop over 15 times the first fw months of ownership! Bad car, horrible sevice and they do not value their workmanship.
I am a machine
Indeed. years ago I had a conversation with a nice guy from Chrysler who said they were building enormous databases to track which parts went into each car they built so that they could track more closely which cars were affected by each recall. if they discover after the fact that a particular batch of a few thousand lug nuts was bad, they could then track and recall just the thousand vehicles which had those lug nuts rather than replacing the lug nuts on millions of cars.
and the smaller the recall in cars affected, the smaller the news profile.
"Remember Ford's cruise control, it burned down hundreds of vehicles as i recall."
Oh yeah. My parents came back from vacation to find their Ford Crown Vic a smouldering pile of slag in their garage.
When they remembered to pick up their mail at the post office, it included the recall notice for the defect which caused the fire...
(yes, the defect caused parked vehicles to spontaneously catch fire! they had a little membrane switch connected to the brake system so cruise control would get out of the way while you were braking... the membrane broke down over time letting brake fluid into the vicinity of the electrical parts of the switch. and they left the hot side of the switch connected to the battery even when the car was off!)
"they left the hot side of the switch connected to the battery even when the car was off!"
That's what you get when you screw your engineers, or hire cheap ones.
I find them bland and boring
most car affectionados do.
but I respect their reputation.
but do the soccer moms of america still respect them? will they trust a toyota when the only thing a typical soccer mom knows how to work is the gas pedal and brake?
Please, this is just a media circus.... Toyota can at least make a hybrid, brake and/or accelerator issues notwithstanding. GM/F/C can't even make a hybrid car that starts...
I would buy a Toyota car anytime... if anything, this creates potential discounts for their products.
Government Motors has a vested interest in keeping this in the headlines -- LaHood was not even coy with his "stop driving Toyota" comments.
It does show that Toyota is just not as practiced and adept in the art of recalls -- GM and Chrysler have that down to a science.
Boycott the Government -- Buy Ford or Foreign.
The new Toyota Kamikaze! Banzai! You fucking Americans!
I think Toyota and Tiger need to find a way to hook up.
They have much in common. Both part Asian, both are numero uno, both have recently stumbled badly, both had been hiding things, both recently compelled to testify morosely in public, both have a reputation for steady performance as the competition tends to falter, both seeking to soon make a roaring come back, and when it comes to the ladies both want to rack up big numbers.
Toyota could introduce a new SUV model, the Tiger, featuring extra stiff bumpers, shatter resistant windows, and, in the Cheetah Edition, a classy automated roll out mattress/wet-bar in the back.
+1
Even more incestuous is how Toyotal hired former regulators to talk the regulator out of regulating.
But let's not let how the game is really played get in the way.
Toyota makes higher quality cars than any of the american makers period. Talk to any mechanic and he will agree. Anyone who has owned a Toyota and a GM will always remember who makes the better car. Its going to take alot more than this recall to change that.
The only problem I see with this Toyota thing is they are going to start making their cars better now that all this bad publicity is swirling.
I know many people who own a Toyota. Most of the cars have over 200,000 miles on them. I believe that if the car was to burst into flames while they were driving it, they would get out, cry for about ten minutes, and then go buy another one.
Toyota needs to fire senior management. They screwed this up.
I own a 2005 Tacoma PU that had this problem. I reported it to my dealer and they said it could not happen. According to them, this could only happen due to driver error. My truck is a 5-spd. The first two times it happened, I pushed in the clutch and used the brake to slow the truck and pull over. The engine raced until I pumped the accell pedal hard several times.
After the third time, with my wife driving, and no help from dealer after each case, I crawled under the dash and played with the pedal until I could reproduce the problem. It was all due to a screwy spill-lip on the outer rim of the rubber floor mat. I was able to eliminate the problem with a pocket knife. It has never returned.
Any Toyota dealer or engineer could have done what I did. They could have saved lives by just replacing or modifying that mat in any service visit - or with a recall. Instead, they decided to ignore their customers or treat them (well, me in this case) like idiots.
There may be some other problem with the drive-by-wire system but I bet my experience was the most common. This thing has played out like a Greek tragedy with hubris meeting Nemesis.
Again, there are so many electronics and gizmos of dubious value in all cars these days - many of them driven by emissions mandates - that this kind of thing is going to start happening more and more and more. Ironically, many of us buy Japanese because they seem to have integrated all that annoying, unavoidable technology better than other car makers.
Why do we think that complexity going 70mph down the highway is less problematic than complexity in finance?
I do not like the auto industry as an investment, but when the industry moves, Toyota will see the bulk of the sales.
Things do not add up with this Toyota recall. I guess when car companies become nationalized, it makes sense for the govt to pump them and dump on competitors.
I moved out of the city 7 months ago, so had to buy my first car. After tons of research, i bought japanese(not toyota), and love it. My research, 7 months ago, reading many many car reviews, led me to believe that US automakers were well behind the curve on many levels, and as a result i really did not consider any domestic models.
Fast forward 7 months later, started looking for a 2nd car this past weekend. Went back to the same resources i used for my previous auto research and the praise of US models was unbelievable. Basically flip the rankings from last year between Jap/domestic.
I stopped at a toyota dealer yesterday, and it was a complete ghost town, there were FIVE salesman standing in a circle outside the dealership, and we were greeted as we opened our car door in the parking lot. Great time to buy a toyota, but the salesman desperation was pathetic, they were about to throw in a night with their wife to get me to leave with a camry.
Plain and simple - Toyota is a piece of shit!!!!!!
Signed,
Detroit Iron Forever
It's simple. Corrupt governments and corporations. All trying to find enough scape goats to make you think things have changed. It's like a sewage shower trying to get only the dirtiest of it's members clean. Probably trying to cut some deals. You all take a little fall and we'll pull our military base out kind of crap.
First hand information - I have a close friend who is a service advisor for a local lexus dealer in my town. He was between one of the cars in question and a bench. The car wanted to go - and it did - right into his legs.
The guy makes good money and wants to keep his job - So mouth shut. Everyone in the service department knows that there has been a long standing problem.
meh. Today is a great time to buy a Toyota. If I were in the market, I would definitely go and buy one right now. I might pick up some TM tomorrow during their interrogation on Capitol Hill.
I wager Mr Toyoda doesn't sit there smirking like Dimon, GS honcho and the other banksters did.
With the upcoming hearings, we may just find out that Toyoda tells us what "I don't recall" means in Japanese.
Hopefully he gets pressed hard if he tries that tactic.
So somebody is marking all of the comments supporting Toyota and/or pointing out the government's explicit involvement in auto manufacturing as junk?
Splendid! Your government at work.
Sounds like the Big Three are at it once again. They were about to sink so they pulled the bag of tricks out that they used many years ago.
Again it's the statistical models that determine the behavior.
Of course every one is free to take to task these bunk statistical models, but then people actually have to do work and think. We might actually have to hire someone to figure out what's causing the problem, we might have to form contracts with various car repair shops, we might have then take less a smaller bonus this year.
Let alone the human cost of not doing the thing right first....and subsequently the value of your brand or stock equity.
The sad state of affairs, from my own guessimation.....Toyota is better than the average bear. There will be some that do it better than toyota, but the reality is, I'd guess 90 percent was worse. Don't worry, they are just responsible for everything that touches, tastes, or otherwise reacts with your body in some way, or your children's.
But we love our Jimmy Hoffa filled hot dogs because they taste sooo gooooood.
When every action we take is the solution presented by the all knowing statistical model, you'll know we're just a bit further than how things are here in 2010 (and the preceeding couple of decades).
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