Toyota’s public relations nightmare continued Monday, as stories broke about the car maker delaying its recall of vehicles in the United States, even after the company had knowledge of sudden-acceleration problems that allegedly lead to dozens of deaths.
Various news outlets, including the Associated Press and The New York Times on Page One, cited internal Toyota documents that became public last week.
In one particularly damning comment, one Toyota official in January told his colleagues that he had to break some bad news, namely that some of the company’s car models “have a tendency for mechanical failure in accelerator pedals.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/business/12gap.html?hp
The message went on to say, “The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.”
But there was a lag, three days later, before Toyota finally folded to public pressure and recalled millions of vehicle.
Basically, the documents show that Toyota stalled in taking any action to remedy the acceleration problem, and that it even took steps quicker in Europe and Canada than it did in the United States.
Last week the federal transportation authority announced that it was fining Toyota the stiffest penalty allowed, $16.4 million, over the recall related to the sticking accelerators.
Several days after that last week, federal safety officials warned Toyota that they might impose a second penalty against the car maker. That fine would stem from Toyota’s handling of the recall of 2.3 million cars and trucks with accelerator pedals that could get stuck. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-fine10-2010apr10,0,1294645.story
