Toyota: Forced to Fight

A study published in the U.S. has come to the conclusion that many of the accidents involving Toyotas — some of which resulted in fatalities — were, in fact, caused by the drivers themselves. But even as the anger in the United States subsides, Toyota still has to work on its image.

It takes a good deal of time and money to build up a good corporate image. It took decades for the public to begin associating the name Toyota with quality and safety, if not necessarily with beauty in its product line. In the end, it took only a few weeks and 8 million recalls to destroy that image. Of all things, sticking accelerators, brake failures and sliding floor mats were blamed for accidents in the United States. For a company like Toyota, that’s practically a death sentence.

What’s being heard from the U.S. these days may not rescue Toyota’s image overnight, but it’s bound to make the Japanese managers happier. Ironically, a study undertaken in the United States came to the banal conclusion that the drivers themselves were in many cases at fault for the sometimes fatal accidents. The study concluded that drivers mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal. That is admittedly a bizarre explanation, but it wasn’t just pulled out of thin air. In Europe, there were no reports of such accidents despite the fact that many people here drive Toyotas with accelerator-brake layouts identical to those of the Toyotas driven in America.

Right from the start, the main problem for the Japanese was particularly American, and it had global consequences. It was a problem the Japanese could have solved earlier than they did with more transparency — but also with more confident communication. Many in the Tokyo corporate headquarters saw the American love of legal compensation claims as a part of the problem. But the Japanese didn’t make an issue of it because they thought doing so would only further damage their image. Instead, Toyota’s management adopted a passive role and watched as a series of accidents culminated in a global recall action that threatened the corporation’s very existence. Symptomatic of this attitude was their recent announcement that their vehicles would be given a “more emotional” design, as if it were a question of aesthetics.

Customer confidence, image, market share, sales — the more everything collapsed, the more the company curled up defensively and left the conversation in the hands of others, who found it in their own interests to magnify Toyota’s difficulties. In the previous year, Toyota’s market share in the U.S. had climbed to nearly 20 percent. When the domestic manufacturer General Motors had to be bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars, Toyota’s problems came just at the right time. And American politicians went along with it. There’s no question Toyota was experiencing grave quality control issues ever since it had decided, long ago, to favor quantity over quality. But, at the same time, in the midst of the economic crisis Toyota became a victim of aggressive U.S. trade policies. Now they have to sell themselves, as well as their cars, with more confidence.