Comment & Analysis
Needless to say, it has not been a good few weeks for Japanese car manufacturers. A recall of Toyota models in the US with accelerator pedal problems was extended to Europe in late January just as the company announced that more than 700 manufacturing jobs were under threat at its plant in Derbyshire.
More bad news for Toyota was to follow, with the third generation of the groundbreaking Prius petrol-electric hybrid also recalled because of problems with brakes, affecting 8,500 cars in Britain. And on Tuesday, Honda was forced to extend a recall of certain cars from 2001-2002 because of problems with the driver’s side airbag inflator, which Honda warned could result in “injury or fatality” for the driver.
It’s been open season on the two firms in the mainstream media both here and in the US, who are now trying to dig up dirt on every aspect of Toyota’s design and manufacturing in a bid to unearth more quality issues.
But it’s perhaps important to put that feeding frenzy into context. Have Toyota and Honda, firms long renowned for the quality and reliability of their models, suddenly become bad at manufacturing cars? Industry experts say not, and that there is a strong element of schadenfreude in the way Toyota’s problems are being reported, and the damage thus done to its reputation.
In the United States, one industry observer says, Toyota had cut into the market “like a hot knife through butter”, dislodging the so-called Big Three US automotive companies, GM, Ford and Chrysler, all of whom have endured an atrocious year-and-a-half, from their perch. Now those companies, already clinging on to survival, have the pleasure of watching a seemingly imperious rival weaken.
One commentator on the industry says: “What is better for Congress and the lawyers and everyone else is having a real go at the Japanese manufacturers, when you think what they have done to the Big Three.” Indeed there are signs in the US, already the most litigious country on the planet, that lawyers are gearing up for a series of suits against Toyota that may end up encompassing just about any problem that consumers have had with their models in recent years.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that a leading Republican has invited beleaguered Toyota president Akio Toyoda to meet politicians from the Senate and House of Representatives to testify about the carmaker’s problems.
Toyoda’s mea culpa on the company’s troubles on 5 February may have worked against him in the US, some experts believe. While the English was perfect, the content and tone struck was distinctly Japanese in its formality. Toyoda expressed his personal “deep regret for the inconvenience and concern” of the company’s customers with talk of Toyota’s “contribution to society through the manufacture of automobiles”, and the need to re-establish “genchi genbutsu fundamentals”. This downbeat, formal approach may not have played well with US consumers, who may have preferred a tub-thumping “we’ll move heaven and Earth to sort this out” type of rhetoric, one expert suggests.
In the meantime, others say, product recalls are actually rather common, from urgent fixes of the type now being carried out at Toyota dealerships in the States and Europe, through to things that can wait until a car’s regular check-up. In comparison with the volumes of cars sold by the Japanese carmakers, the number of recalls is still small.
But some believe we may see other manufacturers, including perhaps Nissan, making announcements similar to Toyota’s in the coming months. “The automotive industry has had a terrible year anyway: carmakers may be thinking privately, let’s really make this an annus horribilis and get these issues sorted out. Then we can all move on.”