Toyota Rebuts Gilbert Claims [WEBCAST NO LONGER LIVE]

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: March 8th, 2010

toyota rebuts gilbert claims webcast no longer live

Toyota has just started a live webcast intended to rebut some of the allegations made by Professor Gilbert, among others. Click here to watch the webcast, already in progress.

#PR #Quality #Recall #Safety #Toyota

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JSF22 on Mar 08, 2010

They're trying to match former GM General Counsel Harry Pearce's famously dramatic and successful evisceration of "Dateline NBC." Unfortunately Toyota's story isn't nearly as good, and, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, "They're no Harry Pearce."

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- Crash sled on Mar 08, 2010
  
  No, Toyota isn't trying to match Harry Pearce. If they were, they woulda sent out a rough-and-tumble greasy lawyer to verbally thrash his media tormenters, and their bottle rocket story. Somebody like Pearce, for example. Instead, Toyota arranged a webcast with a bunch of meek as a kitten Exponent engineers, who spoke cautiously and circumspectly, but basically eviscerated that Gilbert clown. The idiot media probably didn't understand a word of it, because it contained no daggers and bombshells, or blood or earthquakes. They wanted a Pearce to get out there cussing. Sorry, dopes.
  
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- JSF22 on Mar 08, 2010
  
  Crash Sled, I don't disagree with you at all. Toyota did a professional and scholarly job of showing how and why the eminent Southern Illinois professor's tinkering was absolutely irrelevant. Their problem, as you also point out, is precisely that nobody they are trying to influence will be impressed. The sad truth is that it took showmanship like Pearce's to defeat Dateline and take the wind out of the sails of all the idiots who had believed NBC. As the shallowest, stupidest, but by many measures most successful, auto executive I ever worked for once told me, when I was trying to argue on the facts, "Forget the facts. The only thing that matters in this business is the packaging."
  
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CamaroKid on Mar 08, 2010

I hope that the TTAC editors give us a break down of what was said. I watched for all of 5 minutes and all I got was: 1) Dr. Gilbert had cooked the results (something that some of us predicted over 2 weeks ago) 2) What he did could never happen in real life and 3) Toyota and Toyota hired engineers have almost no personality and are as exciting to watch as watching paint dry or grass grow.

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Russycle on Mar 08, 2010

"3) Toyota and Toyota hired engineers have almost no personality and are as exciting to watch as watching paint dry or grass grow." Gee, given their model lineup, who could have predicted that?

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Mac Reid on Jul 11, 2010

You think Toyota would have learned from Tylenol. Take resposibily..then solve the problem. Attacking anyone and everyone that points out you have a problem is stupid. Toyota would have been further ahead getting Gilbert to assist in finding a SOLUTION!

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