Page 137 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

The gap in perceptions between the United States and Japan
was large. In Japan, the perception was that the sticky pedal re-
call was an example of Toyota putting customers first by issuing
a recall for a very rare situation that had not caused any accidents
and wasn’t perceived as a true safety defect. In the United States,
however, this latest recall was completely undermining Toyo-
ta’s reputation for quality and safety and the trust that so many
Americans had put in it. All the dealers that we spoke to re-
ported dealing with some customers who, after the recall was
announced, were afraid to drive their vehicles at all. Given the
reporting that had been done, the customers were in no position
to understand the difference between cars zooming out of control
at 100 mph and cars with sticky pedals that would stop on com-
mand with a normal use of the brakes. For many Americans, trust
in Toyota’s being fully honest had nearly evaporated.
Further compounding the mismatch and tarnishing Toyota’s
image in the United States was the fact that when the recall was
announced, Toyota didn’t have a fix identified. Up to that point,
engineers in Japan had been focused on designing a new pedal for
future vehicles, not on replacing the pedals that were already in
vehicles. As a result, it couldn’t tell customers how or when it was
going to deal with the issue. Toyota also didn’t immediately stop
selling vehicles that had been built with the potentially sticky
pedals; that announcement didn’t happen until January 26.
The media interpretation of what was now a full-blown pub-
lic relations debacle was that, despite years of denials, Toyota was
finally but halfheartedly admitting that there was a defective part
that could cause vehicles to accelerate out of control, ultimately
killing people. It didn’t matter that the part in question couldn’t
cause runaway vehicles (since the sticking did not affect brak-
ing performance), nor that there had not been any recorded ac-

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