Page 17 - Toyota Under Fire

PREF ACE

Thus, we make no claims that this book is comprehensive or
that we’ve uncovered every fact or detail related to Toyota’s recall
crisis. We’ve done our best to be thorough and complete while
also being succinct. There is a great deal of detail from our inves-
tigations and interviews that doesn’t appear in the book, because
this book is not intended to be a defense of Toyota or investiga-
tive journalism. Instead, we’ve tried to provide the materials that
are relevant to understanding the crisis and what others can learn
from it. The hard times Toyota was living through allowed us to
see Toyota in a different context than ever before.
Since I’d been studying Toyota, the company had had a non-
stop record of success. The years from 2003 to 2008 were the
most profitable five years in the company’s history. In fact, Toyota
Motor Corporation had been profitable for almost 50 years run-
ning, continually gaining market share. This was the first time I
had seen Toyota operate during truly bad times, during a crisis.
It’s one thing to pledge a commitment to long-term thinking and
putting people first when you’re winning. Doing so when you’re
under fire is a whole different ball game. How would Toyota re-
act? Could Toyota turn the dual crises of the Great Recession and
the successive recalls, like other challenges it has faced, into an
opportunity for improvement?
This was certainly not the first crisis that Toyota had faced.
In fact, while this has been obscured by the record it has amassed,
Toyota’s entire history is one of facing severe challenges and re-
sponding successfully. The original company, Toyota Automated
Loom Works, was founded in rural Japan in the 1890s as the
country emerged from centuries of isolation to find that the world
had left it behind. The automotive company as we know it today
literally had to rebuild from the ashes of Japan after World War
II, fighting through a period of near bankruptcy. It had proved

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