Archive for the &;Automobiles&; Category
Toyota ScapegoatingSupplier?
February 10, 2010
Is Goliath-sized Toyota scapegoating their David-sized supplier, CTS Corp?
It&;s hard to count the ways Toyota has turned what should have been a simple product recall (several years ago) into a snowballing PR disaster. Now it appears they are scapegoating a supplier&;in addition to slow disclosure, stonewalling investigators, denial, failure to get out in front of the issue, non-availability of corporate leadership, uncoordinated and negative actions by stakeholders (the dealership attack on just one of the messengers, ABC News), to name a few.
The angry dealers might also want to cancel their subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to noting Congress doesn&;t buy Toyota&;s pedal and floormat fix, the Journal is questioning Toyota&;s putting the blame on CTS Corp. The WSJ checked with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who confirmed that CTS-built gas pedals get stuck only at low speed and aren&;t &;believed to make cars accelerate out of control.&; According to CTS, the sticking pedals have occured in fewer than 20 cases and have never been linked to any accidents.
Many suspect possible software issues with the electronic control system in the vehicles. Toyota may not even know what the problem is. Whatever the real fix is, blaming a supplier only makes Toyota look worse.
Tags:Toyota, Toyota-disaster, Toyota-public-relations-disaster, Toyota-recall Posted in ABC-News, Automobiles, Automotive-industry, Public Relations, public-relations-disaster | 1 Comment &;
ABC News Hangs Tough onToyota
February 10, 2010
Bravo to ABC News, hanging tough in the face of Toyota&;s shameful attempt to intimidate, control coverage and &;punish&; ABC by pulling their advertising.
Instead, ABC News went full throttle (sorry) on Toyota again, running an exclusive interview with Dimitrios Biller today.
Biller worked as managing counsel for Toyota&;s American operations from 2003 to 2007. His comments? &;You have to understand that Toyota in Japan does not have any respect for our legal system. They did not have any respect for our laws.&; Unhappy ex-employee? Sure, but one who says the company made a practice of not revealing safety issues.
&;They were hiding evidence, concealing evidence, destroying evidence, obstructing justice,&; said Biller.
The Toyota recall(s)&;and coverup&;is a big story. It&;s not just how many Toyota owners there are in the United States. How many vulnerable children travel in Toyotas every day? How many of us shares the road with a Toyota at any given time? ABC is right to stick with this story like a terrier cornering a rat.
And when Toyota finally puts its house in order, the advertisers will come back to ABC.
Tags:ABC-News, Toyota, Toyota-dealers, Toyota-public-relations-disaster, Toyota-recall Posted in ABC-News, Advertising, Automobiles, Automotive-industry, public-relations-disaster | 2 Comments &;
Toyota Dealers Compound Public RelationsDisaster
February 9, 2010
News flash: Toyota doesn&;t know what they&;re doing. And apparently, not just in terms of making safe cars, but in terms of communicating.
If the company&;s slow disclosure, foot-dragging, lack of responsiveness and weak apologies aren&;t bad enough, Toyota dealers are engaged in classic blame-the-messenger behavior, pulling ads from ABC, which has displayed a rare pair in fully covering the crisis. The 173 Southern dealers in five states cited &;excessive coverage of the Toyota issues.&;
Telling, Marcia Owens-Reder, senior vice-president at 22Squared, the Atlanta advertising agency that handles the account for Southeast Toyota, &;tried&; to talk the dealers out of the move, but they insisted on &;punishing&; ABC for their own company&;s problems.
This is a textbook example of when you&;re in a hole, keep digging with a backhoe.
Just as bad: Jack Fitzgerald, a Washington, DC, dealer, told the AP, &;I can&;t wait for the village idiot to dump his Toyota for nothing. I can certainly make money on it.&;
Good to see that the classic American car dealer, far from being a dying breed, is still providing the ethical service that has long distinguished them.
Tags:ABC-News, Toyota-dealers, Toyota-disaster, Toyota-Prius, Toyota-public-relations-disaster, Toyota-recall Posted in ABC-News, Automobiles, Automotive-industry, public-relations-disaster | 3 Comments &;
LA Auto ShowNotes
December 9, 2009
I attended the LA Auto Show&;s Press Days last week. The show had a focus on environmentally-friendly vehicles, and I got to drive three different &;green&; cars.
Porsche Cayenne &;D&;&;Great to drive a Porsche, as even the SUV has lots of pick-up and style, once I figured out that the ignition key goes to the left of the steering column. Downer: the car probably won&;t come to the USA, as the representative told me that they&;d sell 1000 Cayennes a month with little positive impact from having a diesel. The implication was that even with &;clean diesel&; the pain-in-the-ass factor was too high for their market.
Chevy Equinox fuel cell&;handles like what it is, a mid-size Chevy SUV with the extra weight of fuel cell technology. Felt good to drive, but clearly still an experiment&;only given out to 100 customers who live within short driving distance of a hydrogen filling station, of which there are apparently only two in LA. The car gets about 150 miles on a hydrogen fill-up. Not a commercial vehicle, yet.
Ford Focus BEV (battery electric vehicle)&;Based on a relatively old stripped-down Focus, the BEV was clearly a prototype. It had a big red button that looked like the nuclear war &;football&; between the seats. Its purpose was to completely shut down all systems if it had a techical problem; &;Don&;t push it!&; the engineer on the ride-along shrieked. Yet this car had the most potential of the three I drove; currently it gets 80 miles from its giant lithium-ion battery pack, and Ford is shooting for 100 before a commercial release sometime in 2010. And unlike the fuel-cell cars, alls you have to do is plug it in overnight.
Another interesting trend at the Show: Japanese cars, once famous for their fuel economy, are heavy, expensive and deliver poor gas mileage. A poster child for this problem is the 2010 Acura ZDX&;a 4,462 pound hatchback for $56,045 in the &;advanced&; configuration, it delivers 16 miles to the gallon in the city&;Escalade territory. I also think it&;s ugly, but you can decide.
Tags:Acura-ZDX, Chevy-Equinox-fuel-cell, Ford-Focus-BEV, green cars, LA-Auto-Show Posted in Automobiles, Automotive-industry, green cars | Leave a Comment &;
The LastPontiac
December 7, 2009
The last Pontiac, a non-wide-tracking G6, rolled off the assembly line just before Thanksgiving. After 82 years, the company that &;built excitement&; went out with a whimper, not a bang, run into the ground by the geniuses of GM.
Tags:American-cars, American-muscle, death-of-GM, Pontiac Posted in Automobiles, Automotive-industry | Leave a Comment &;
Ford Fusion Hybrid, InternationalSupercar
October 9, 2009
Ford has been much in the news. Unlike the other Big 3 automakers, it didn&;t take government money and hasn&;t been as painfully mismanaged or dismembered as Chrysler or General Motors, which no longer builds excitement. Ford has retired debt, reached an agreement with the UAW and seen its stock more than quadruple in the past few months.
What&;s missing from the equation? Cars. But Ford&;s comeback, to be successful, depends on building cars people want to buy. Like the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Which I watched hungrily at its launch at the 2008 LA Auto Show, and which I plunked down my hard earned money to buy six months ago.
I call mine &;international supercar&; because it&;s an American Ford, is a 5-seater based on the Mazda 6, is assembled in Mexico and includes a Japanese gas/electric hybrid system and navigation system.
After six months, I hardly see it, as my wife has decided it&;s her favorite car of all time. She loves the heated leather seats, the Sync Bluetooth handsfree phone system, the hard drive where Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen reside&;and most of all, the 36.8 miles per gallon we&;ve averaged on gas over the 6500 miles we&;ve driven the car. Doesn&;t hurt that a friend says our silver Fusion &;looks like a Lexus.&; Or that my wife looks good in it, either.
One of my favorite features is that it goes up to 45 mph on electric power alone, so I can be crusing Ventura Boulevard in stealth mode. It runs on regular gas, too, unlike our Lincoln Aviator, which greedily (13 miles per gallon) drinks only premium.
As a techie I love all the electrical gadgets, from blind spot detection to being able to pick a restaurant or a cheap gas station (as if I needed one) on the screen or command it via Blackberry. It&;s basically a voice-operated computer on wheels&;without Microsoft&;s &;blue screen of death&; so far.
I&;ve had my disagreements with Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Neil of the LA Times. But not when he says of the Fusion, &;Wait, so somebody invented the car of the future and didn&;t tell us?&;
Tags:Ford, Ford-Fusion, Ford-Fusion-hybrid, hybrid-cars Posted in Automobiles, technology | 1 Comment &;