Toyota

[Scary]

<truther>Car companies have recalls all the time. This one has been blown out of proportion by the US govt. controlled media to try and improve the competitiveness of the state car manufacturer General Motors.</truther>

[Mich the Tester]

This is the same issue that has been going on for about 30 years - shareholders will continue to insisit on an increased return on investment the only way the borad can deliver that (especially in the current econmic climate) is to keep reducing costs and making cost cuts.

But do people invest in a firm like Toyota hoping for short term gains? That would seem strange to me. Surely Toyota would attract conservative investors who want stable long term returns and a share price that can weather the storms of the market?

[Jeebo72]

Great post old bean.

A Quality Manager in my early career once counciled me as follows:

"A delay in delivery will remain in the mind of the client for roughly the length of the delay. A drop in quality will remain there forever."

Sage advice

Yonk ... very relevant at the mo. I'm going to nick that one!

[Clippy]

<truther>Car companies have recalls all the time. This one has been blown out of proportion by the US govt. controlled media to try and improve the competitiveness of the state car manufacturer General Motors.</truther>

I think there is an element of truth in this with respect to how this has been hyped up by the US media.

However, Toyota haven't helped themselves with very poor communication to consumers and the media which I suspect is partly due to the corporate (Japanese) culture and also because they had multiple issues across models and were not sure themselves of exactly what was going on.

Anyway, don't large corporates factor in lawsuit costs if their products lead to consumer deaths. The calculations favour paying for potential lawsuits as opposed to product recalls. However, this is a potentially massive product recall which probably makes any such calculation redundant.

Remember the Ford/Firestone tyre recall? Both brands survived that intact.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Remember the Ford Pinto.

Great until you got rear ended & turned to toast.

If you read up on that properly, you'll find it was a typical example of the lawyers enriching themselves without any benefit to anyone else, and that car was not significantly worse than any other.

The main cause of these scares is the fact that the USA has such a high proportion of exceptionally stupid and useless *drivers. Remember Audi and Volvo havong all those "problems" with their auto cars "running away" with the drivers unexpectedly? You have the septics to thank for all the daft interlocks now fitted - foot on brake before you can shift an auto out of park etc - and hey presto all those mysterious incidents ended.

* and often drunk and not wearing a seatbelt

[minestrone]

I used to work for Toyota marketing.

[cojak]

I used to work for Toyota marketing.

I'll bet you're happy using past tense...

[minestrone]

I'll bet you're happy using past tense...

They were kind of harmless idiots who used to talk a lot about how energy mum was a state of mind.

In a kind of Andy Dufresne way they are going to come out of this pipe smelling clean, they never thought of themselves as a quality brand, the lengths they would go to distance themselves from Lexus were quite astounding, Toyota was for the masses and Lexus was a quality car according to them and naming to two brands together was completely banned.

Now with the problems have happened they are coming out with the line 'ohh, these minor defects have tarnished the excellent name of toyota and its quality that we have worked so hard to get'. People are now thinking they were a quality brand, fantastic marketing and as this thread proves one that is working.

In ten years they have went from press releases that state that they do not sell directly to the Taliban to one where they claim that they are going to be the best manufacturer of cars again. Genius.

Japanese marketing is better than their manufacturing as my heap of old Sony products proves.