Toyota: 13 New Deaths, 2 Closed Plants. Allegedly
The MSM is abuzz with a rash of fresh (well, not really) deaths-by-Toyota. According to an Associated Press report (this one via Twincities.com,) “complaints of deaths connected to sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles have surged in recent weeks, with the alleged death toll reaching 34 since 2000.” In the past three weeks alone, people told the NHTSA about nine crashes involving 13 alleged deaths between 2005 and 2010 due to accelerator problems. Without the heightened awareness, those people would have passed away unnoticed. Other fatalities loom:
Jobs.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency has on the wire that “Toyota is considering suspending car production at two U.S. plants for about two weeks due to sales falls following massive recalls of its vehicles over brake problems.” Reuters has the same story. No further details are available (we’ll keep an eye out.) As long as the lines are shut down only for a few weeks, people will be kept busy doing maintenance chores. If the sales will continue to fall, the axe will fall also.
As for Toyota’s plans, we will know more after 5pm local in Tokyo. Toyota Prez Akio Toyoda will hold his third news conference regarding the firm’s recent string of quality problems. According to the Nikkei [sub], “Toyoda is expected to give a status report on the recall of the Prius hybrid car for brake problems as well as outline the steps the automaker is taking on quality issues.”
Update: The Japanese Chunichi Shimbun, published in Nagoya, close to Toyota City, reports that Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky site will close for four days. The San Antonio, Texas plant will close for 10 days. Camry, Avalon and Tundra sales have taken a hit, says the paper. The closures would come out to a total of 14 days, not to two weeks each,
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Comments
Join the conversation
The repeated suggestions that this is "much ado about nothing" are ridiculous. This site (and others) are teeming with apologists trying to marginalize the issue and deflect attention elsewhere. According to this site the only NHTSA data which is valid is the data which suggests Toyota has few complaints and any data to the contrary is irrelevant. Hogwash! And who cares how awful the domestics manufacturers may or may not be? Toyota screwed up and they know it as evidenced by the recall of over 8 million cars. Either there are safety problems necessitating the recall or else the Toyota management is incompetent for issuing an unneccessary massive recall. Which is it? I have yet for the apologists to explain why State Farm tried to bring the UA issues to light in 2007 if Toyota cars were not having problems. The MSM is hyping the story because that it what it does, but it does invalidate Toyota's problems. Toyota has been irresponsible with its customers' safety and is now paying the price of their dishonesty. They have only themselves to blame.
Cletus, have a peek here. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5573.shtml Want some ketchup with that crow? Makes it taste a bit better, I hear. I presume you skipped the article in this blogsite where it was proven that Toyotas were amonst the least problematical cars over the past decade, using the governement's own figures? Unless every single engineer and employee at Toyota simply woke up one day and decided en masse, that they'd simply turn out crap, I'd have to say the allegations of economic warfare are much more likely.