Page 146 - Toyota Under Fire

THE RECALL CRISIS

That new philosophy began to take hold immediately.
Shortly after the Prius brake recall, Toyota issued a separate recall
for 8,000 Tacoma four-wheel-drive trucks over the possibility of
a failure in the vehicle’s front driveshaft. While most of the af-
fected vehicles hadn’t yet been sold at the time of the recall, it was
the third Toyota recall announced in just three weeks.

Toyota and Toyoda Are
Called before Congress

Just when it seemed that things could not get any worse, they did.
With confidence in Toyota at an all-time low, allegations that the
company’s legendary quality had collapsed, and questions com-
ing from every side about whether the company was endangering
its customers, some political theater was inevitable. Several con-
gressional committees scheduled hearings to grill Toyota execu-
tives about the recalls, safety issues, disclosure, and unintended
acceleration. This is a fairly well-rehearsed dance on Capitol Hill
when a large company receives the kind of negative attention that
Toyota was getting. Chief executives are called to Washington to
be publicly chastised by members of Congress so that politicians
can be seen to be “doing something.” Typically these chief execu-
tives deny wrongdoing (see Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs),
attempt to shift blame elsewhere (see Tony Hayward of BP), or
claim to have been out of the loop and unaware of what was hap-
pening (see Kenneth Lay of Enron).
The public and a number of members of Congress expected
Toyota to follow this dance. But the invitations to testify went
to Toyota’s U.S. headquarters and TMA President Yoshi Inaba.

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