Jim said it best. It is just another recall. Nothing more. The Press thrives on things like this, Why? Bad News sells. the sad part is Here you have a company that is the top selling car manufacture in the world as of last week and now they will struggle with the pit falls of an engineering oversight. granted, I am not defending them I am sure I heard of some lives lost "SUPOSEDLY" from these faulty parts. but at the same time, WHO determined that it was said parts that caused these losses?
Point I am trying to make here, is How many manufactures of automobiles in the world have NEVER had an issue with parts on a car that they produced?{Mass production, not exotic} The Big three here all have had their issues it just happens that Toyota is selling 3 or 5 to 1 of the competition. That in its self has to say something about the company.
If you truly look at each and every commodity that we touch every day, just think about the risks we take no matter what it is. food, toiletries, clothing, Snack foods, ready to eat meals. The list goes on forever. Just a few months ago, we were hit with the scare of H1N1. How many deaths? Well the fact the press left out was the deaths in any given year for the common flu over shot the deaths of Swine flu by 3 times. But that was never brought to light. Why? Because if that point of information would have came out, then A) Who ever stated the idea of it being a terroristic act would have been discredited instantaneously, B) People would have taken H1N1 for what it truly was, Another string of a flu virus and C) the press couldn’t get people glued to the TV each and every night just to see how many people died from last night's report. No one watches the news, then the reporters have no purpose in life.
For 16 years I worked Quality Assurance in the military and did the QA work for the company I just got laid off from last year. and that is one reason that I enjoyed my work as a QA. It's not about giving a person a better product, or saving the company money in re work, it's about saving lives. Making whatever product your company as accurate, fast inexpensive and SAFE as possible. But, One thing that I also learned from my time in the QA field is there is NOTHING perfect. man or machine.
I can't speak for Toyota's program, but I am sure that it is no different than Ford's, General Motors, or Dodge's. I have owned Toyotas and even raced a Toyota in the past and I found their cars to be some of the toughest and most dependable cars out there. and if I were in the market for a new car or truck, I would look at the no different than I would any other car or truck on the market.
Well I have spilled my .02 here, just want to say that the press causes a lot of the frenzy that feeds the blind. I am not insulting all out there, just some people will listed to Katie on the evening news and she puts her little spin on what happened, without thinking that Toyota literally sells millions of cars around the world compared to most of its competitors yes, the number of faults will be higher with the number that are sold worldwide. But that is something the press conveniently leaves out. The fact that Toyota is not the first to have a recall, even a mass recall doesn’t come up in the press, and I bet you my boots they won't be the last either. Most of the bad news is an illusion created by people to feed frenzy.
Wolf