Comments | polka_king: The honeymoon is over

polka_king

The honeymoon is over

Feb 04, 2010 13:26

I grew up working on Toyotas. When they were mechanically simple vehicles they were amazing. Toyota mastered engineering simple mechanical systems. Their electrical control systems were also very good. They almost always found the best and simplest solution to any engineering challenge. They were never afraid to eat legacy engineering costs ( Read more... )

Comments 4

t_o_e February 4 2010, 22:19:35 UTC

I certainly don't think Toyota was perfect. I do see that the current recall was initiated by Toyota itself. Many car companies have had recalls. The recalls for cars from the Big 3 have rarely be initiated by them. It took the government demanding the recalls. I think that Toyota's taking responsibility is a good thing.

I don't want to sound like I'm America bashing, but it's interesting that the accelerator with the problem came from a firm in Indiana. The cars with the Japanese made accelerator have not had problems.

polka_king February 5 2010, 05:01:52 UTC

Did you completely miss the part where officials from the NHTSA had to fly to Tokyo to convince Toyota to recall the cars? This was absolutely, completely *NOT* voluntary, nor was the massive recall in 2005 for the faulty ball joints. Toyota first ignored the acceleration problem, then blamed driver error, then blamed floor mats and is now blaming the accelerator pedal. The accelerator pedals from Japan were designed differently from the ones in Indiana. Who's to say that Toyota didn't design them wrong? I don't believe that the problem is with the accelerator pedal. I believe it's a problem with the electronic controls but I don't have any hard mechanical evidence to back it up ( ... )

t_o_e February 6 2010, 05:54:43 UTC

I agree with you on Honda. But I don't agree with taking a page from GM. I still look back to when W. Edwards Deming approached several American companies, including GM, and they refused to even consider quality management practices. He then went to Japan...

Good story on NPR about the recall. Top 5 largest recalls. #1 and #2 - Ford. #3 and #4 - GM. #5 is interesting. It is the Toyota recall, however, what they've done is combine 2 separate recalls. The floormats is one recall and the accelerators is the other.

Another NPR story was that a lot of Toyota owners that didn't trust the accelerator fix were trading in their cars for...

...another Toyota.

Even after the recall, I think you'll still find the company with a high customer satisfaction rate.

polka_king February 7 2010, 06:59:29 UTC

Toyota will come out of this very well. The biggest reason for that is because people trust Toyota. They believe that the company really cares about them. One of the largest mistakes domestic automakers ever made was to be arrogant toward their customers. When GM made half of all the cars in America they could afford a little bit of arrogance. The long-term effect of that is that if GM recalls 5000 Pontiacs for a bad heater control switch people see it as proof that Americans can't build a decent car. When Toyotas are charging out of control and killing people the perception is very different: Toyota still builds a quality product but they sometimes have small problems. Toyota gets the benefit of the doubt because of their years of very good products and their attentive corporate culture. Their customer-focused dealers are a big asset also ( ... )