Toyota Motor, presumably reading my colleague Dan Bogler’s posting, has apologised for those pesky accelerator brakes. And almost immediately recalled a slew more cars in its home market of Japan, begging the question: how much does an apology help? If you’ve spent the weekend going slo-mo back to your dealer and missed Jack’s first soccer match/Susie’s riding lesson or watched your shares lose nearly a quarter of their value, it may only go so far.
Anyway, the guys who should really be making the formal presentations right now are Toyota’s rivals. By rights, GM, VW et al should be lining up to deliver one huge arigatou to Toyota. This is the biggest fillip the rest of the beleaguered car industry has had since Henry Ford wandered onto the shop floor waving a conveyor belt, and ranks well above any old scrappage scheme. Essentially, the biggest and best player has been temporarily hobbled, clearing the highways for European, US and other Asian manufacturers.
Rivals, particularly in the US, have been trying to puncture Toyota’s wheels for decades. They regularly send lobbyists up to Capitol Hill. They whine about the cheap yen – unfair advantage – conveniently forgetting that people actually like to drive Toyota cars. Now, in a puff of brake dust, there is no need to complain. Toyota, it transpires, carried the seeds of its (temporary) destruction within its own state-of-the-art technology. Toyota’s US sales fell nearly 9 per cent in January, when the first recall was announced. People do not lose faith in cars; they scout round the showrooms of Ford, Hyundai and the rest for other models. Rivals are playing coy about any benefits for now, but they have been quick to roll out trade in offers. Ditto investors. All that money flooding out of Toyota shares has to be parked somewhere.
