stuck in neutral
Posted by Anthony Zumpano on December 7, 2009 09:35 AM
Toyota is one brand that can’t wait to leave 2009 behind. As Abe Sauer wrote just last week regarding its recall of some 4 million vehicles due to an accelerator problem that was responsible for a dozen deaths:
"It can promise 'it won't happen again,' but..."
Well, it’s happened again, and there’s a painful yin and yang relating the two recent sets of problems. Last week’s news involved cars that kept accelerating. This week’s involves cars that suddenly stall – like while you’re cruising along the interstate, or navigating an intersection, or (in theory) as you’re trying to cross some railroad tracks as an Amtrak Acela barrels toward you. Last week’s news made Corolla and Matrix owners sigh with relief when they learned their models didn’t have the acceleration troubles. Guess which two models were affected by this week’s news?
(Almost forgotten are the rust problems that forced a recall of Toyota trucks earlier in November. Forgotten, that is, unless you’re the owner of one of those 110,000 Tundras.)
As Abe did last week, I cruised over to the Toyota homepage for the brand’s response to the affected Corollas and Matrixes – there’s been no official recall yet, but a federal investigation is underway – and you’ll find a news alert… for the acceleration issue. Worse, when you select the press room page for the Corolla, the featured story is “Toyota Corolla Gains Star Safety System for 2010” – which won’t make you feel any safer behind the wheel of one of the 386,000 temperamental 2006 Corollas or Matrixes. (At least when the brand gets around to announcing its latest car woes, it can reuse that “news alert” button.)
Speculating on what this latest round of problems will do to a once-infallible brand image is like beating a dead horse or flogging a stalled Matrix. There are only a few weeks left in one of Toyota’s worst years ever, still enough time for tragedy to befall my 2003 Echo, a discontinued but possibly vulnerable Toyota compact.
One guesses that Toyota’s executives can find optimism in their homepage which, unflattering news alerts aside, tries to cajole customers into participating in the latest “Toyotathon” of limited-time offers. The promotion’s tag line offers a bit of wishful thinking for 2010, almost a mantra for getting through an awful 2009:
“This won’t last long.”
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