Toyota Dealers Close Ranks Behind OEM on Acceleration Recall

Toyota Dealers Close Ranks Behind OEM on Acceleration Recall

About 150 Toyota dealers from across the U.S. came to Washington this week to meet with Toyota executives, including Toyota Motors president Akio Toyoda, and to show support for their franchisor, which was in town by order of Congress for hearings to investigate widespread reports of unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles.

The dealer rally, organized through AIADA by WANADA immediate past chairman and Washington area Toyota dealer Tamara Darvish, culminated in a morning press conference last Tuesday, February 23, in the U.S. Capitol, immediately preceding Toyota™s first congressional appearance before the House Energy Commerce Committee.

Our sense of responsibility is as broad as our reach, Darvish told a packed room of news reporters, referring to the Toyota community across the U.S. whose service departments, including hers, have been going 24/7 on recall repairs to ensure Toyota owners get the prompt, thorough service they deserve. U.S. dealers have repaired 800,000 Toyota vehicles since the recall was announced last month.

Darvish and the other dealers, which included Mike Jackson of AutoNation and WANADA dealer member Jack Fitzgerald, pointed out that all automakers are subject to vehicle recalls when safety issues emerge, whether mandated by federal safety regulators or implemented voluntarily as was the case with Toyota.

The breadth of the recall, 8 million worldwide, 6 million in the U.S., is what got the attention of Congress. The biggest congressional moment, however, came when Akio Toyoda personally appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last Wednesday, Feb 24. Toyoda, the grandson of the company™s founder, responded through an interpreter to intense questioning by the committee who were drilling down on the source of the unintended acceleration. Toyoda and his team took responsibility for the problem, repeatedly apologizing to Toyota owners and their families who were injured or killed in crashes that allegedly resulted from sudden acceleration. As to the cause of the failure per se, Toyoda reiterated to the committee that their accelerator pedal fix addressed the problem while he adamantly denied any failure of the electronic throttle control, a theory being vigorously advanced by plaintiffs™ lawyers.

There is also still considerable uncertainty over just how many proven instances of unintended acceleration have occurred in Toyota vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it has reports of 2,000 alleged cases. Consumer Reports magazine, meanwhile, says it has no reports of any incidences in its entire database of consumer surveys, which measures well into the millions.

Nonetheless, Toyota is moving expeditiously to put in place systems that will alert it sooner to any vehicle safety issues and allow it to respond rapidly. These include more local control which will allow in-country management to order a recall rather than Toyota™s Japan-based Customer Quality Engineering team; putting a representative of Toyota™s U.S. operations on the global board, creating a new position of product safety executive for the U.S.; hiring more engineers and creating SWAT Teams that would be onsite within 24 hours of a reported unintended acceleration incident. It is also installing brake override systems in eight models of the 15 models being recalled. These make up 72% of the total units covered under the recall. Older models not getting the upgrade are not compatible with the brake override system.

In addition, Toyota is making more Black Box readers available. The Black Boxes are recording devices installed in cars that gather data from five second before a crash to one second later. They are required on all 2012 model vehicles, though some current models have them. Devices to read the boxes are not yet widely available, however.

If nothing else, the news coverage on Toyota™s problem should get all vehicle owners thinking about recalls because half the people who get recall notices don™t get the recall work completed, said Jack Fitzgerald. Toyota will come through just fine because when it™s all said and done, they still make great cars, he said.

Mike Jackson of AutoNation agrees. “What’s fascinating about the American people is that if they see a company that’s done it right for decades, but has a bad moment and makes a mistake and owns up to it and commits to change and does everything possible to make it right, the American people will understand and forgive, he said.