The arrogance isn't surprising. It was recently shown during the V-6 sludge problem.
Ultimately, it's not surprising. Reliability is a major sellign point for Toyota. They're going to do whatever they can to sweep everything under the rug. They've got lots to lose.
The domestics can be a lot freer about recalls. The general perception is that they make crap. That may or may not be true, but it is true that they have some crazy recalls all the time. So, it's not big news to the media. They report it, but no one makes a big deal cuz they go, "oh, another thing that causes the car to catch on fire and burn to the ground. Whoop de doo." After the initial Toyota recall about the floor mats, Ford came out with an even bigger recall a week later. Didn't make a peep on the national news.
I'm not surprised the domestics are jumping on this. What I'm surprised is that Honda/Nissan and the Koreans aren't making bragging ads.
The problem here is Toyota has know of this problem since 2002 instead of fixing all the effected vehicles and fixing it going forward they have chosen to place blame on floor mats for an easy cheap fix. It wasn't until some smart police officers started noting in their accident reports that the floor mats weren't even in the vehicle at the time of the accident (ex: the South Lake, TX accident in Jan. '10 that killed 4 people).
Then they blamed 1 of the vendors that makes their gas pedals but in reality that only fixed 30% of the effected vehicles. The other 70% effected have the 2nd vendors gas pedals. Honestly Toyota has no idea what the problem is and this is going to effect a lot more vehicles then what is currently listed on the recall. Ex: The Prius the last time I looked wasn't part of the recall but if you go look at some of the law suits there are a lot of Prius owners with the accelerator sticking issues. One I remember clear was a lady in CO or CA that had to put her Prius in a river because she couldn't get it to stop.
Making claims we over look American manufactures recalls or we think it's no big deal. Well 1st remember Ford's & Firestone big tire issue back in the 90"s. That was a HUGE deal and wasn't swept under the rug by no one. It killed people and we wanted answers and wanted to problem fixed. Ford took a huge reputation hit just like Toyota has and will continue too. But, Say we over look American manufacture recalls no days as no big deal isn't true and you know it. Let's be honest they haven't had recalls that effect volume that Toyota's does and that will increase by millions soon because it will turn out to be a electronic/PCM problem that will effect more vehicles & YM. You don't see GM or Ford with recalls that are killing people and effecting most of their fleet.
Resell of Toyota vehicle is going to drop because smart people currently aren't wanting to risk their lives in one.
Toyota for years has been out to be #1 and put dependability and safety on the back burner and well now it's coming to bite them in the rear. Now all the other manufactures are sitting back and laughing at them.
