Anyone else getting heartily sick of those two little words ‘Toyota’ and ‘recall‘? There’s been a few signs of pushback today.
Firstly, kudos to US Consumer Reports’ David Champion, a British engineer (and son of a tyre engineer) from Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, who once worked in the electrical components industry before going on to development-test cars in the US for Land Rover and Nissan. He now heads the influential consumer group’s auto test division and has sometimes been accused of being pro-Japanese cars because CR has the temerity to recommend reliable, well-made cars from that country to consumers wanting a drive with minimal hassle and cost. And he’ll take them off the ‘recommended’ list if they are subject to enough recalls to cause CR concern. His perspective for NBC Nightly News on Thursday: Toyota has had 2,000 acceleration complaints in a period in which it sold 20,000,000 cars. Do the math – that’s one in 10,000. The math for the UK recall alone is about 200 complaints for 180,000 possibly affected cars, or one in 900. 10 lawsuits pending so far, 26 complaints (which could be more cars than that Europe-wide) and about 1.8m cars to recall and check in Europe alone. The big picture is not nearly as bad as it looks at a first glance at tabloid newspaper headlines yet many Toyota owners have had just cause this week to have been scared silly.
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Firstly, recalls and continuous modifications to parts of cars in production happen all the time in the auto biz. You can test to destruction when developing a vehicle but sometimes it takes consumer use in a variety of conditions to winkle a defect out. Toyota itself illustrated this today. At some point a decision has to be taken: is it serious and/or dangerous enough to warrant a costly recall to fix a lot of cars that aren’t exhibiting a problem or do you go the ‘service campaign’ route – modify the part going on cars at the plant and fix the rest if an owner complains of a problem or routinely as a car comes in for service? It can be a hard call. Sometimes, outside influences make the decision – enough people complain to the likes of the NHTSA in the US or VOSA here in the UK and eventually Authority makes the call for you: ‘get ’em all back and fix em’.
And then there’s the media. Remember the Ford Explorer/Firestone tyre recall in the early 2000s? And the pictures of overturned and wrecked SUVs in a sea of family-day-out detritus, shredded tyres clearly visible? Toyota’s equivalent is that awful, grainy, video-grab aerial view of a wrecked Lexus, the car and its surroundings burned, and the accompanying photo of the California-perfect dad, mom, daughter and family friend who died in the wreck after an ill-fitting floor mat in a dealer loaner apparently trapped the gas pedal and the driver was unable to find neutral on the gear selector or engine-off on the ‘start stop’ button. Pix like that inevitably stir raw emotions and officials, legislators, automaker executives, owners of similar vehicles, the general public and newspaper editors into outraged demands for action. Now.
They also get misused. Right now, there is a North American recall for misfitted floormats in some Lexus and Toyota models. And there is a separate recall – in North America, Europe and some other markets – to check for ‘sticky’ throttles. Total is about 8m vehicles and, in North America, there is about a 1.2m-vehicle overlap where some models need checking for both problems. But that didn’t stop Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper on Wednesday running the burned-Lexus pic and announcing the release of the emergency call transcript. You had to read well in to the story to learn that (a) it all happened last August and September and (b) was not directly related to the UK/Europe recall for ‘sticky’ throttles. Thursday, they were at it again with ‘Do Not Drive Your Toyota’ banner headlines. And, again, you had to read well in before you learned that those remarks were made – and later withdrawn – by a transport secretary. In the US. Friday’s little gem was to quote Nick Freeman, a Manchester-based traffic lawyer who has made his name defending high-profile footballers in speeding cases, who said: “If you have one of these cars, don’t drive it. The recall puts you on notice that there could be a fault, which means you assume responsibility. You could be held criminally and civilly responsible for an accident and, in the case of a fatal accident, you could be charged with death by dangerous driving.” Though the Association of British Insurers said insurance policies would still be valid, this sort of thing has the potential to scare owners when the likelihood of something being wrong with their vehicle is actually quite low. Consumer magazine Autocar’s top editor certainly was not impressed with the paper’s approach.
Still, perhaps Toyota could have said something a bit sooner. It took until 9pm Friday night in Japan before company supremo and family scion Akio Toyoda finally broke cover at a Nagoya press conference – and didn’t say that much – and, though there have been numerous Tweets, press releases and fast responses to our queries, I was surprised no Toyota GB or Europe PR lifted a phone to check we were up with all the play. Hopefully, we were, and we also took the chance to consider the issue from the supplier viewpoint.
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By GlobalDataOther news almost got lost in all the Toyota fuss. Honda had a little recall of their own to deal with and Spyker brought us up to date with plans for Saab. The deal for the Chinese to buy Hummer was extended and the Opel workforce continued to object to plans to close the Belgian plant.
It was fiscal Q3 results time in Japan and troubled Toyota was among those presenting some better than expected numbers or forecasts along with Denso.
We’ve also been tracking a simmering dispute between Fiat and its unions over the future of the Sicily plant. Fiat argues it’s too costly just to assemble cars there and the boss is adamant he’ll close it; the unions say why not make some parts locally too? This’ll run a while yet.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts
Deputy/News Editor
just-auto.com
