A recent ABC News/Pew Research poll found that 72% of people polled regarding the Toyota recall think it's an "isolated incident."

As I thought, Toyota will not take a big long-term hit unless its future problems are well publicized, similar to the current spontaneous-acceleration issue.

The people continue to be sheep...

 

The media didn't push back hard enough.
Why didn't Dateline or 20/20 or 60 Minutes run with this?
They bought Toyota's assertions that it's the mats and the pedal.
No one questioned the TBW issue.

What a shame.

 

I imagine the have to be somewhat careful....Toyota spends a ton of $$$ on advertising.

I agree it is a shame....

 

Wait until they fix all the pedals and there are still problems.

 

The New York Times has a big write up:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35181415...ew_york_times/

 

I agree. I think this debacle has a long ways to go. By the way, while they are working on the accelertor pedal assembly, are they going to cut off the bottom of the foot pedal like they said they were going to do so it would not get caught in the floor mat? What happened to that plan? Would you want some dealership mechanic working on the electronic part of the accelerator pedal assembly? I would be very concerned about that.

 

I'm pretty sure they're re-flashing the PCM when they come in to replace the pedals.

 

That's a very good write up. Normally, I get angry at the mainstream media for it's bias against American cars, but in the last year or so, Toyota's lagging quality has gotten the attention of the media. Now I think they are in full-out "hammer on Toyota" mode.

 

I don't understand how 3+ million cars or whatever it is could be considered "an isolated incident" by anyone.

If you want to consider it a single problem needing a single fix, well, that doesn't work either, because first it was 'defective floormats', and now it needs a 'precision cut metal reinforcing bar', and they are semi-scretly re-programming the computer too.... so that's THREE fixes (so far) for the 'isolated incident'.

 

You know if this were Ford or GM the media would have 24 hr. marathon coverage of the recall & every journalist in the county would be doing an investigative report on it.

 

I've been saying this for year, it isn't because a company is foreign or domestic, it is because they finical media goes to extremes. They hammer and punish those that are doing bad and praise and drool all over those that are doing good. They hate dieing and stagnant industries and love emerging ones.

 

Not sure this would be the case. Especially not now, when the media appear to be shifting somewhat.

 

They started doing it months ago...
I posted links to the TSBs for several Toyotas and Lexus' that specifically instructed the dealer/tech to upload new programs to the PCM during regular servicing (oil & filter changes, etc). The question for me now is this - are the programs they have been loading for the last 12-16 months a true fix, or will there be Rev 2 or Rev 3 of that software to address more issues and attempt to provide a redundant system or a brake over-ride? Hard to be sneaky and not get caught once, but 2 or 3 times might be pushing it.

If Toyota can get a redundant system in place by covert and un-communicated work on customer's cars (even if it is only software-based) and stop 90% of the runaway cases, they will emerge unscathed by this, and have the whole world snookered into believing that the pedals were the problem. Mark my words. (And don't forget - I am the one who broke this issue on this very forum 2 years ago (almost 3 now) to the howls and scorn of a few import nuthuggers and folks that said I was blindly biased towards domestics. )

What a time for a whistle-blower to come out. If you were a code-writer for Toyota right now and had some documents where your boss told you to fix "xxx" problem and keep it quiet... you could become wealthy, and go down in history as the guy that killed Toyota (David and Goliath theme here). Ralph Nader anyone? You'd never work for another OEM as their programmer, but you'd become rich by the interviews, appearances, memoirs, and books, etc.

Interesting moments for Toyota here. Watch, and learn fellas.

 

You're pretty off the mark on this, and I would like to know when that poll was actually carried out.

Toyota is getting stomped on this pedal situation. Sales have all but crashed, and Toyota's reputation has been hammered. That's the current situation Toyota's in. And it ain't gonna recover immediately from it no more than Ford did with the Explorer incidents.

It does in fact take a lot to affect a car company's long term future. One incident isn't going to kill anyone's reputation the way decades of no-so-great quality.

The big payoff in this is that people are no longer going to see Toyota as invincible. Ford has been trying to get the word out on it's quality for the past few years, and even before this Toyota episode, it was starting to get out. This only helps.

As for people being sheep, I disagree in this instance.

Buying a new car is the biggest financial step a person will take next to buying a house. They will review, ask questions, study, and will go with gut feelings more than any other purchase they make. Toyota has a 30 year reputation of building well made appliences. That is not disputable. Even lies can't be covered up that long, regardless as to how good your PR department is. What DOES take forever to change is a bad reputation.

People realizing that Toyota isn't flawless will start to realize that Ford is leading in quality & that GM isn't nearly as bad as they think.

 

I always enjoy reading your posts; there's a lot of great information and enlightenment in them.
However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention again that the Pinto didn't kill Ford, so I'm not so sure that even if one of those people came out and blew the whistle on Toyota, that it would "kill" them. One HUGE thing Toyota has against it right now that Ford really didn't have against it back then, the level of competition is MUCH higher nowadays.