Toyota Has A Problem

What does Toyota and Iran have in common?

Stanley McCrystal has apologized to the people of Afghanistan for killing civilians by mistake. Media is all over it and he is a hero. All is good because the media says so. So where is the voice of the bereaved? Are they OK with it? Is Apology enough? Where are the scholarships, and the memorials, and memoirs for the dead? Maybe they were all just losers and had nothing to say or contribute to society. Maybe they deserved this fate!

So America kills and all they have to do is apologize. When it comes to Toyota, nobody is buying their apology. The tearful testimony from a driver, the repetition of bad news throughout the mainstream media playing in the hands of the special interest groups.

Iran making Nuclear weapons? According to media they already have their finger on the trigger ready to launch these weapons of mass destruction. In reality and according to the best estimates they are about 15 years away from nuclear weapon capability. The nuclear plant that Russia promised is still under construction. Constant delays and reneging of the signed contracts is the order of the day. Russia playing both sides to extract maximum political capital.
So what is the point? What does Toyota and Iran have in common? Apparently a lot. Both Toyota and Iran need better PR machines. Of course the media is not going to say the right thing unless they are paid lots of money. Buying journalists is age old practice and the media sacred cows always get the best treatment. How much is Ford and GM paying their lobbyists to spread the bad news?

The mealy mouth apology of Toyota chief and his cowering in front of the congress only shows a complete lack of understanding of American system and American way of doing things. Now they are going to spend a billion dollar fixing the damage caused by this apology. The lawsuits, the lost sales, and the image problem will cost Toyota hundreds of millions of dollars. Every little problem will be attributed to bad breaks and whatever other ills that they can find, all lumped in this giant issue of unintended acceleration because of stuck accelerator.

There was a better solution to this problem and may have saved Toyota few millions in the long run. They could have spent million dollar on securing a good lobbyist, a savvy PR firm, a team of well connected lawyers, and few well placed journalists and problem would have been mitigated. Not to mention, a few heads at high places should have rolled, blamed this problem where it belongs which is at the point these parts were tested and that happens to be at the factories here in the US. Aren't these cars assembled and tested here in the US. Sure the parts come from Japan but the final testing and approval rests on the engineers in the US factories.

Maybe this will be a lesson for the next generation of Toyoda family, the fourth generation. What would the grandfather have done if faced with the same situation? A question we may never find the answer to.