Page 147 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Rather than seizing the opportunity of a public platform for
TMC President Akio Toyoda to begin rebuilding trust with cus-
tomers, the company was initially content for Inaba to appear
before the committee. Given the expectations, many in the press
interpreted this as indifference on the part of the firm’s most se-
nior executive. Congressman Darrell Issa suggested that he would
push for a subpoena of Akio Toyoda if he did not appear at the
hearings.
This was yet another example of the disconnect between the
U.S. political environment and Japan. The TMC public affairs
group still perceived the crisis as a U.S. issue that could be ef-
fectively handled by U.S. executives. Once the Japanese public
affairs group understood that members of the congressional com-
mittee expected Akio Toyoda to attend the hearings personally,
and a formal invitation was sent, they accepted. It seemed to be
this direct brush with the overheated politics of the situation in
the United States that finally drove home to Toyota executives in
Japan the realization of how deep the crisis really was.
There were several hearings before different committees and
subcommittees of the U.S. Congress. The hearing on February
23 before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee began with testimony from Rhonda Smith, who de-
scribed how in October 2006, her Lexus had accelerated to top
speed and would not respond to any of her attempts to slow the
vehicle: pressing firmly on the brake, shifting the car into neutral
and then reverse, and engaging the emergency brake. Nothing
helped, according to Smith, until the car “decided” to slow down
on its own, and the brakes were suddenly functional again and
able to stop the car.
David Gilbert, professor of automotive technology at South-
ern Illinois University in Carbondale, followed Smith and de-

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