Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Toyota Stops Selling 8 Models due to Deadly Gas Pedal


Four people died in Dallas from an accident involving a runaway Toyota on December 26. That led to millions of cars being recalled and stop in production of eight Toyota models. WaPo reported:

Tuesday's recall and sales suspension covered the following models and model years: the 2009-10 RAV4, 2009-10 Corolla, 2009-10 Matrix, 2005-10 Avalon, 2010 Highlander, 2007-10 Tundra, 2008-10 Sequoia and certain 2007-10 Camry models.

Brian A. Johnson, auto analyst at Barclays Capital, said the gas pedal problem could reveal a danger of global parts sourcing. "Toyota is known for using the same parts design across multiple cars and factories and countries," he said, "which everyone is trying to emulate because it gives you economies of scale. What this shows is one of the risks of that strategy. When something goes wrong, instead of a couple-of-hundred-thousand-part recall, you have a multiple-million-part recall."
Toyota joins Johnson & Johnson in losing their quality edge. Who can be trusted in a matrix of "mean & greedy" leaders? Buyer beware continues.