TalkingHead

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=a0ST9lHB.Jho

WTF is going on with Toyota...?

There has been an ENDLESS wave of bad publicity and recalls these last 3 months. Sexual harassment suit. Recalls of 1 million vehicles, a couple hundred thousand here and there, the Tundra the other day and the TC today. Let's not forget the 3 Toyota executives being investigated now. Toyota is f_cking up BIG TIME. They better get their **** together soon. They're experiencing great sales, but the backlash will be massive if they keep f_cking up! GM on the other hand, is losing market share, but their products have been SOLID with few recalls and problems.

PrivateTucker

Wow, glad I sold mine when I did. I'm done with Toyota. They grew too much too fast.

rosskoss

Toyota is messing up big time. They're trying to do too many things at once.

Their focus should be on what made them big in the first place - simple, dependable, economical cars. If they violate this formula in any way, they're asking for trouble.

arrow519

stuff like this happens to companies all the time, right now toyotas gettin some hard hits...it'll all blow over, and truth be told, Toyotas are still great cars (statistically the number 1 car company on the planet)

i love my tC i wouldn't trade it for any other car in its class (just upgrade to a bigger/more expensive luxury car years down the road)

krdshrk

Uh.. glass is glass... it can shatter... no biggie imo.... it'll blow over.

Try2k

Agreed, Toyota is just catching a lot of it right now due to its massive growth. I know that my parents have had to take his truck in (GM) at least 2-3 times over the last couple of years for recalls... It's going to happen, calm down.

goingcarcrazy

Someone needs to tell Bloomberg that our wind deflectors aren't plastic.

engifineer

You guys should get deep enough into a couple of big companies.. hate to break it to you.. the stuf you bring up is NOTHING. This stuff happens everywhere in all industries. The bigger you get, the more BS you have to take. And the probability of having people in your organization that are not quite ethical rises.. so you have to deal with more.

Lawsuits mean zero until they are proven. ESPECIALLY sexual harrassment lawsuits. The bigger the company, the more employees trying to sue. It is a common thing.. most of those lawsuites are proven wrong in the end. Dont even get me started on "discrimination" lawsuits from every employee with a hint of non-native origin that was fired due to poor performance. So dont go crazy on that stuff until you hear results.


Oh, and lets look at a FEW of GMS complaints:

GEN MOTORS 1998-99, & PARTIAL YEAR 2000 SILVERADOS & SIERRAS

GENERAL MOTORS 1998 - 2004 SONOMA AND S-10

GENERAL MOTORS MODEL YEAR 2003 - 2005 HUMMER H2

2004 - 2006 CADILLAC SRX WITH ULTRAVIEW TYPES SUN ROOFS

Those are JUST the GM's listed in the JANUARY defect investigation report of this year... and wow.. the caddy has sunroof breakage and my favorite.. the HUMMER has STEERING KNUCKLE FAILURE. look up just about any car you want and you will find recalls.. yes, even porche.




And hell.. there isnt enough room for all the chryslers on there..


Go to the nhtsa and look for yourself.

And I am not sure where you get SOLID from GM. I love GM out of all american car companies.. and have always been a chevy guy when it came to american. My father was even more of one. He owns a shop.. you could not GIVE him a new GM, chrysler or ford. Some of the same problems again and again.. but are deemed "normal" by GM. You dont even want to get me started. EVen after they started having massive issues with thier vehicles I still stuck to thier trucks. Now, I have a 4Runner sitting outside, and the next pickup I get will either be a pre 95 chevy or a newer toyota.

So while they have thier problems.. they are hardly in the running for the worst out there. And you dont even know which problems are real problems yet. Hence the words investigation. While I dont completely trust any large corp. , I also dont think that condemming them over stuff that is not even proven yet is quite logical either.

engifineer

Oh, I forgot to add some other recalls:

1998-2004 AUDI A6, S6, QUATTRO DRIVER'S SIDE DASH FIRE

2004 DODGE DURANGO INSTRUMENT PANEL FIRES

2002 MITSUBISHI MONTERO HYDRAULIC BRAKE BOOSTER ACCUMULATOR

Those are just the MONTHLY recall queries for may

cweckel2000

You guys need to chill out. Toyota still makes great quality cars. I work at a Mercury/Lincoln dealership and at one point we had recalls or tsbs on every single new car we sold. Toyota is not even close to the crap that Ford and GM sells.

paul34

wow usually Toyota's recalls are nowhere as serious as these... case in point, the latest Tundra recall isn't even for something wrong, its to prevent owners' stupidity from killing their passengers...

wibblywobbly

It's things like the seemingly unfixable rattling, creaking, shaking and general low quality sounds emanating from somewhere in the roof of my TC that make me doubt Toyota. Ditto for the all the problems the new Avalon had in it's first year out. Or the bumper on my brothers Tacoma that became totally unpainted after a year and a half.

All minor issues, but that's the point. In the past, Toyota's didn't have these issues. This is the supposed greatest car company on earth after all.

My TC sounds like it is falling apart inside - this is supposed to make me a Toyota customer for life?(the whole idea behind Scion) My 6 month old car has problems, the dealer can't fix them and Scion corporate could care less. It doesn't matter that GM sucks or Audi's catch on fire or Honda auto-transmissions are junk, I am not buying another Toyota and I am telling everyone I know. I may be one person, but ____ of enough people and your are in the same predicament as GM - they could make a solar powered Corvette that goes 0-100 in 3 seconds, handles like a go kart, will last 500,000 miles with out a problem and has the interior of a Lexus, people will still think it's junk because GM has an awful rep.

KooLAiD

Plus at least with the Camry they are really taking care of their customers. My dad had his Camry about a month or so when he started to have transmission problems. The fix...a brand new transmission with 100,000 mile warranty, paid the first three months of his payments, gave him a rental for three weeks and paid his gas for the whole time he had his rental car. Any big company that has this many things going on is gonna have problems. The key is how they fix the problems.

atodak

Just like B.I.G said,"Mo Money,Mo Problems"

Serialk1llr

^ werd

buster71

HOly cow I'm going to print this out so I can show it to people when they insist *I* must've done something wrong to cause my moonroof to shatter.

Follow-up: I just got off the phone with Scion Customer Care and the rep claims she has no idea this investigation is out. Also, when I reported the incident to Customer Care last month, I was told by 2 separate reps that they never heard of the actual power sunroof breaking. How the fork is that possible? Either they don't tell their customer service reps anything, or they hire people who are pretty good at lying. Anyway, I told the rep that if she didn't know anything about the investigation, she should find someone who does and get back to me. Mind you, I remained very calm and polite, but I let her know that only until you've had a panel full of shattered glass thrown in your face while driving on the freeway will you understand why it's important I have my questions answered. Man, i'm ____ed. It's been a roller coaster 3 weeks. I was ____ed/scared/relieved when my moonroof blew, then decided to trade in my car. A couple of days ago I call off the trade-in and cancel my order for a new car, cause I was starting to feel like Toyota did the right thing and my tC was safe. Now I read this article and I feel unsafe again, and now I feel like I've been either lied to or giving over to a set of uninformed Toyota company cronies.

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. Strangely enough, I still feel like I love my tC dearly, and it's not it's fault it was created with a built in defect. But my faith in Toyota is dwindling...

jrussell98003

Wow...talk about people getting upset...

Look, I know it's frustrating when something goes wrong with a vehicle we've invested so much time and money in. And for those of you who've had problems, I know you probably feel let down by Toyota.

But let's keep it in perspective. Toyota is still at the top of the charts, consistently, for quality. Those quality marks INCLUDE our Scions. So it's not like they've just given up and new Toyotas don't have good quality anymore. For every one that has a problem, there're thousands out there that don't.

I am an engineer at Boeing. Lord knows we've went through some problems in the past years with growing too quickly, getting complacent as number one in commercial airplanes, and ethics scandals. But what those problems really do is re-focus your energy into becoming a better company. We got complacent and lost to Airbus. We're coming back. And in the mean time, our current products have performed wonderfully. Just because a company faces some problems, it does NOT mean they have given up on their customer base. Same goes for Toyota.

It's just hard to manage that size of a company and not have some problems. The folks at Toyota are human, just like you and me...

KooLAiD

I've spoken with a few different individuals at the dealership and the issue, the way I understand it, is that some of the 2005 and few of the 2006 tCs don't have a specific film that goes on the back of the windshield to keep it from shattering in your face. The newer windshields have this so if a rock or something hits it might still break, but won't fly into your face. It is a wierd situation because some dealers say they know about it and that it isn't a recall, but others say they have never heard a thing about this happening. I can't imagine an issue of this size hasn't been distributed to all the dealership managers.

engifineer

^^ I think you mean sunroof. There are pretty strict requirments on windshield glass

buster71

The recall was for the wind deflector. Yes, they put a laminate over the deflector in case it breaks, the glass won't shatter into the cabin.

The new investigation is for the power sunroof and fixed rear glass. It's not a recall yet, and may not be. This is the part that shattered on my car.

Go to nhtsa.gov and do a search for the tC under "recalls", and you will see the details for the deflector. Do a search under "investigations" and you will see the details for the power/fixed moonroof. The new investigation was opened on July 7th.