The Trouble with Toyotas: Things you won’t learn from Ottawa this week

You can argue that as a regional outpost to the mothership in Japan, there’s not much more our politicians will learn this week from Toyota Canada executives that U.S. government officials haven’t gleamed from Toyota U.S.A. suits already in a similar trial/hearing/witch-hunt held in Washington, D.C.

Or you can argue that as a sovereign state, Canadians need their own version as to the how and why the Japanese automaker handled the recall of 8.5 million Toyota cars and trucks around the world—270,000 in Canada.

No matter which side you are rooting for, I can guarantee there are a few things our honourable members of parliament won’t come up with as Toyota Canada executives have their feet put to the fire in Ottawa this week:

• Toyotas aren’t all they are cracked up to be Although those in the industry know this has been going on since the mid-1990s, the difference in quality and reliability between the best and worst cars sold is much thinner than ever before. So why are you paying more for a bland-looking, not-very-fun-to-drive Toyota?;

• Toyota is a J-A-P-A-N-E-S-E  automaker Although we in the media get hit over the head at every opportunity that Toyota is a “Canadian” company, the investigation as to how decisions are made within the automaker only highlight what has been known for years: all the important decisions come from Japan;

 • Toyota is as greedy as every other automaker Although the automakers formerly known as the Big Three have been raked over the coals for forsaking quality products over profits for decades, the exposure of Toyota’s volume-over-quality corporate strategies have finally brought to light that it’s just like every other big company out there: it wants to make as much money as possible.

There will be plenty of fingers pointed this week on the Hill.

But will any of our MPs findings actually change your mind on whether or not your next new car will be a Toyota or Lexus?

 

 

Will Canadians ever see new BMW 5 Series wagon?

 BMW has started selling its sixth-gen 5er sedan to its European customers. And just as spring follows winter, the station wagon variant, left, is now being unveiled too. But will Canadian wagon lovers ever get a chance to buy the latest 5er Touring?

As of now, nobody at the German automaker is saying if the new 5er wagon is or isn’t coming our way. Of course, there has been a five-door Five on sale in Canada for a few months: the $79,600 2011 550i Gran Turismo. But the half-pregnant (hatchback/crossover) 5 GT neither looks as good or (we can assume) drives as well as the lower, lighter and less-expensive ($71,000) 2010 535i xDrive Touring.

If BMW decides not to bring the new 5er Touring to Canada, who can we wagon lovers blame?

BMW X5 and X3 who have basically killed off demand?

The wagon-hating, status conscious Americans?

Whomever we point our collective finger at, my advice is get on down to your local Bimmer dealer and get a 2010 535i Touring: it very well may be the last of the 5er wagons to be sold in Canada.

 [Source: BMW]

The Trouble with Toyotas: Should brake override systems be mandatory?

You’ve probably already read the story, or watched the chase video of the runaway Toyota Prius that had to be stopped by a police car Monday in California after the car’s accelerator became stuck.

 Now whether you can blame the car or the driver, it does bring up the question: If the gentleman’s Prius had a brake override system, would he have been put in that situation?

Not every automaker agrees that these systems are an answer.

Toyota Canada has already announced that it will install a brake override system on the 2005-2010 Tacoma and 2009-2010 Venza, 2008-2010 Sequoia, 2007-2010 Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, and the 2007-2010 Lexus ES 350, 2006-2010 IS 350 and 2006-2010 IS 250 models.

The automaker also said the systems will be included into future new production of most (but not all)  Toyota and Lexus models sold in Canada by the end of 2010.

In Europe, the Big Three—Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz—have brake overriding systems in all their cars. Here in North America, Nissan includes the system on all models. Mazda has already decided to install the systems in new cars and has weighed out the option of installing them in cars already on the road. While Chrysler, General Motors and Ford aren’t as consistent, installing them in some, but not all, vehicles.

In Japan, Toyota’s troubles have also caused Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Daihatsu and Subaru to at least consider the override systems for their vehicles.

But as demonstrated in the video above, Toyota Canada shows a car like its Corolla can brake safely even with the accelerator planted without a brake override system.

So will adding the systems prevent these unintended acceleration scenarios?

Or is it plainly driver error?

What about those times when it’s advantageous to left-foot brake, like to settle a car’s weight distribution in corners?

If these systems become mandatory, should they be able to be shut off (like electronic stability control systems for performance driving or track days?

[Source: Kyoda News via UPI ]

The Trouble with Toyotas: Are Canadians just suckers?

When February’s new car sales figures rolled out last week, the story on how new car buyers reacted to the Toyota recall crisis couldn’t have been more black and white on either sides of the 49^th parallel.

As Toyota Canada head Stephen Beatty predicted, the Japanese automaker’s much publicized yet still unresolved unintended acceleration crisis didn’t stop Canadian new car buyers from running out and buying Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

If not as impressive as Ford Canada's 43 per cent upswing, Toyota and Lexus sales were within a percentage point of the 24.9 per cent increase in overall Canadian new car sales, compared to one year ago.

Of course, after recalling more than 700,000 cars here since late last year (over 8.5 million worldwide) and the ongoing bad publicity, that sound you hear is a huge sign of relief from Toyota Canada and its dealers.

Now, south of the border—just as they do with hockey, hatchbacks and handguns—Americans took a different approach when it came time to make a decision to buy a new Toyota.

Overall new car sales were up 13 per cent in the States. But Toyota’s sales were only down 9 per cent.

So why the difference between these two North American solitudes?

Are Canadian new car buyers just suckers? Were we too busy watching the Olympics, ignorant of the daily bad news coming from Team Toyota?

Were jingoistic Americans punishing the Japanese company for its trip ups?

Or was it simply Toyota’s added incentives that drove Canadian sales?

The Trouble with Toyotas: $100M saved applying “cheap” floor mat fix

Toyota President Akio Toyoda ’s appearance this week in Washington to defend his company’s actions on the unintended acceleration crisis isn’t getting off to a great start.

A newly released internal Toyota document claims the Japanese automaker saved more than $100 million (U.S.) by convincing U.S. safety officials to end a 2007 investigation of unintended acceleration complaints with only a floor mat recall instead of a potentially more costly mechanical fix.

"Unfortunately, this document is very telling," said U.S. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Olivia Alair in an e-mailed statement reported in Automotive News.

The document also seems to contradict Toyota Canada’s claims in an interview with The Star’s Tony Van Alphen last week.

Defending the automaker’s strategies as it recalled more than 8.5 million vehicles globally in recent months for problems including sticky accelerators, accelerators that can be pinned down by loose floor mats and a braking problem affecting hybrid models, including its Prius, Stephen Beatty, Toyota Canada's managing director said that Toyota had addressed its problems “properly and quickly.”

As you know, U.S. government officials believe five deaths in the U.S. are associated with floor mats and are reviewing up to 29 other fatality reports to see if they are related to unintended acceleration.

Does Toyota’s newly found backroom dealings change your view of the automaker?

Or do you feel the Japanese company is no better or worse than any other automaker in trying to avoid expensive recalls?

[Source: Automotive News]

The Trouble with Toyotas: Is the media being too hard on the automaker?

In my first post on this little recall matter, I asked, Could it get any worse for Toyota?

Well, if you’ve been keeping up with the media maelstrom surrounding the Japanese automaker’s multiplying recall fiasco in the ensuing few days, apparently the answer is an emphatic, Yes.

If only Toyota had to deal with one of the largest automotive recalls in history. But the media feeding frenzy is a totally different matter. Toyota has become the Tiger Woods of the auto industry. Just when you thought you had heard the worst, the Japanese company is turning around and either stumbling over themselves, or shoving their collective corporate feet in their collective corporate mouth. An unabated, runaway train wreck of bad publicity that doesn’t look like it has an end.

From Toyota’s U.S. head being accused of lying on national TV, to an Apple computer co-founder publicly saying he had some "very scary" trouble with his 2010 Toyota Prius’s brakes, to being mocked on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, above, when all is said and done, it may be how Toyota publicly dealt with the crisis, and how the media covered it, that will decide how bad or worse this gets for The World’s Largest Automaker.

What a mess. But like Tiger, the lines between perception and reality have been blurred with Toyota. Do we really know if the World’s Greatest Golfer had “transgressions” with 19 women? Was it four times that? Only Tiger knows. But it doesn’t matter now. The world thinks he did. And that’s that. Toyota’s in the same sinking ship.

Regardelss if you think Toyota has done the right thing in handling this fiasco, the world thinks less of the brand today than it did a few weeks ago. And like Tiger—which has lost billions in revenue now from sponsors abandoning his leaky boat—based on the January sales numbers in the U.S. and Canada, car buyers have decided to punish Toyota for its own transgressions.

At this point the media has Toyota owners fearful that they’ll lose control of their cars at any moment. But some think concerns have been blown way out of proportion.

Michael Karesh owns and operates TrueDelta, an online provider of auto pricing and reliability data. He figures 5,400,000 Toyotas that have been recalled for a problem that has been reported about 2,000 times. Even assuming that the problem has occurred ten times for every time that has been reported, we have something that happens in one out of every 250 cars and that results in an accident in perhaps one out of every 5,000 cars.

“Sorry…but something that occurs in one of every 250 cars, and that only if we assume that 90 percent of cases have not been reported, is not a sign of a general lapse in quality,” argues Karesh.

Maybe. What do you think?

Do you think the media is being too hard on Toyota?

Or is the Japanese automaker getting its just desserts?

[Sources: The Daily Show, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Toyota, The Truth About Cars, The Comedy Network]

 

The Trouble with Toyotas: If you can’t buy a Toyota, then what will you buy?

No matter how anyone spins this sticky throttle situation, Toyota is in a whole mess of trouble.

Forget the intangibles about “loss of reputation,” or “the shine is off the brand” namby-pamby stuff. Not having the majority of your lineup available for your salespeople to sell is an unprecedented situation in the auto industry.

For the record, this weekend, Canadian Toyota dealers will be more than happy to sell you a new Yaris, Camry Hybrid, Venza, FJ Cruiser, 4Runner or Tacoma.

But if you had your heart set on one of the Japanese automaker’s bigger sellers—like the Corolla, Matrix, Rav4 or Camry, among others—you’ll have to shop elsewhere.

So the big question is: Where?

Spyker saves Saab! Maybe. Probably not.

Out of the burning ashes known as Government Motors, it appears as if boutique supercarmaker Spyker has won the rights to take over the money pit known as Saab.

After a long, drawn out affair, rose-colour-glass-wearing Saabistas are rejoicing that Swedish-designed Opels will continue.

Potentially still-born product like the next 9-5 sedan, 9-4X crossover, 9-3X and maybe even a smaller, compact 9-1, will keep the brand humming along nicely…

Maybe.Probably not.

Canadian Saab picnic won’t save doomed brand

Have you heard? The Saab Club of Canada is planning a “Save Saab” rally on Saturday. The idea is to get the “attention” of the Swedish brand’s parent General Motors and to send a message that Saab should be sold, rather than shut down.

I truly sympathize. But you Saabistas are a bit late. Like by over two decades. The only message you’re going to send is that you probably need a marriage counselor, "Saab? Hey buddy, she ain’t coming back…"

Here's another newsflash: Saab—as a brand—died when GM first bought a controlling interest in the then financially strapped, niche brand in 1990. Remember? And instead of letting Saab be Saab, GM decided to milk the brand dry, simply rebodying Opels.

Can VW’s Golf R fly with Canadian enthusiasts?

After accepting The Canadian Automotive Jury’s Best of the Best award for its entire 2010 Golf family, Volkswagen Canada pulled the cover off a potential new range topper at last week’s Montréal auto show.

Enthusiasts will recognize the blue, muscular-looking hatch left, as the high-performance, 270 hp, all-wheel-drive, Euroweenie-only Golf R model. In fact, VW Canada director, marketing and communications, Bruce Rosen told me it’s the exact same car from the Frankfurt show floor where it debuted last September.

Currently, the GTI is VW’s top Golf in Canada. It’s a fantastically versatile performance car. And its new killer-app—the standard electronic differential—makes it jumps into corners like a feisty left-winger.

As I’ve said before, “The only thing the GTI needs is about another 70 hp. Say, like in the 270 hp, all-wheel-drive European Golf R…”

Et volia!