Originally posted by sigma:

Oh, and I thought of 2 more articles-we'll-never-see-very-mainstream in addition to the 2 I mentioned earlier

1> The oh-so-perfect Toyota recalled a higher percentage of their fleet last year than any manufacturer except Ford (Ford's F-Series recall hurt them because such a large percentage of their fleet is F-series)

2> Toyota is under criminal investigation in Japan for deliberately hiding severe safety defects in order to avoid costly recalls that would hurt its' reputation. Yay Toyota!





And I'll say this about that.

1) Who cares how many cars were recalled? It's about the nature of the recall and if a accident occured because of the problem. If the Ford recall for the cruise control involved say 500,000 units (in the USA), but those 500,000 units could catch fire in your garage, burn the house to the ground and kill you, and it did in one case, whilst Toyota had to recall 1,000,000 cars (worldwide) because the steering assembly may fail, but only say 300,00 of those cars were in the US and so far no such failure had occured here, then who will get the bad press and who will take the hit on their reputation?

2) Ford top brass once bought their way out of being found guilty of 60 or so counts of CRIMINALLY NEGLEGIANT HOMOSIDE in the US after they decided to make the Pinto cheaper by taking out its gas tank liner and rear subframe reinforcement. Elements that without, the car was a ticking time bomb. They knew this, and the didn't care. Their risk-benefit analysis showed that it would be cheaper to pay out when they killed people with their unsafe design then it would be to fix it and make the car safe. Ford also decided to use a non IRS suspension on the Explorer, compensate for the handling problems by recommending an inappropriately low tire pressure and then using dubious quality tires. This lead to the death, disablement and severe injury of over 100 people. Ford tried to cover both of those incidents up and only recalled those veicles when the Federal Government threatned to force a recall. How is that any better than what Toyota did?


Last edited by red99sesport; 08/02/06 02:55 AM.