Modern carmaker Toyota has been under heavy scrutiny for the past several months due to its acceleration and braking defects. As a result, it will cost the Japanese carmaker $2 billion dollars in repairs and loss sales. Of course the auto industry has a history of vehicle recalls which is not breaking news. This problem is not Toyota’s lack of engineering or quality of their cars; it’s the arrogance of their company’s culture and lack of a quick response to solve issues. Toyota has long been known for its superior car quality, global brand presence and its unmatched reliability, which is now threatened by their turn of events.
Surprisingly, Toyota had technical defects in their parts, which was widely ignored. In 2002, Safety Research and Strategies (SRS), a consumer advocacy group, reported that there were a high number of acceleration problems in Toyota’s cars during the same time the carmaker introduced their new electronic throttle control technology. The car company ended up blaming the problem on the floor mat. They’re reasoning was that the floor mat was loosened which jammed the gas pedal, causing the pedal to accelerate uncontrollably.
The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, (NHTSA) conducted an investigation is 2003, but did not take their action seriously. Toyota ignored these problems which resulted in the car company to recall nearly 3.8 million domestic vehicles in November 2009, the company’s biggest recall ever. Since the past 10 years, Toyota has been pointing the blamed finger to others rather than themselves. At first they blamed the gas pedal problem on its own customers for improperly installing the floor mats and when that didn’t work, they blamed its supplier for the defect. CTS Corporation (one of Toyota’s suppliers) responded back blaming Toyota for their own defect. CTS C.E.O, Vindo M. Khilnani stated, “CTS didn’t become a Toyota supplier until 2005, (the problem surfaced in 2002)”. (Saporito, 2010).
Toyota has been since perceived as one of the best built cars in the world, soon to be questioned by these series of events. 400,000 of the company’s bestselling hybrid car, the Prius, and other hybrid model cars have been recalled due to its anti-locked breaking system glitch. Toyota was not only getting heat from the media, they are also being criticized by politicians as well. Lawyers around the U.S. have filed class action suits against the company. The SRS has investigated that there were over 2,000 incidents of acceleration problems in Toyota models, with over 800 crashes and 26 fatalities since 1999. Because of all of the car problems, customers are deciding to buy other car brands. As a result, Toyota’s trade in prices has plummeted.
With a huge amount of bad news for Toyota makes you wonder, why is this happening to one of the best carmakers in the world? Well during my research I’ve discovered that these problems with Toyota have been accumulating for the past 10 years in which the carmaker has been ignoring until now. For starters Toyota for the past 20 years has been fighting for the title to become “Biggest Car Company in the World” and has recently achieved that title however this came with a hefty price. In order for the company to become number one they would need to expand their growth in fast rates. Toyota’s ambition to expand rapidly has compromised its quality in their cars not providing enough quality control for its products. This is a result of its employee’s and upper level management not double checking on their work. Second, the carmaker has created a culture within the company that had so much loyalty and sureness of its products that they were convinced that Toyota would never make a flawed product and ignored any critics from others including the consumers who would question their quality. Finally Toyota simply did not responded in enough time to address the problem and failed to find a solution in a timely fashion. The Japanese carmaker did not understand the extent of sensitivity when it came to their American consumer and car defects which ultimately damaged its brand value in the American Markets.
This boils down to the culture of the company and how it communicates with the public and ethics of the company. Not saying that the company is unethical (one of the best companies to work for) however, it was a strict company culture which hindered its ethical vision. Toyota’s ambition to grow caused it to become arrogant and slowed their response to its car defects. This put the car company into this awkward position. The old saying goes it takes decades to create a reputation and takes seconds to destroy which it fits perfectly with Toyota’s situation. Hopefully the carmaker would provide effective solutions to its problems and return to become a great car company it once was.

WORK CITIED
Saporito, Bill. "Behind the Troubles at Toyota." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. TIME, 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 24
Feb. 2010. .