In 1989 Toyota ran an advert with the headline “Why We’ll Never Make the Perfect Car”. It was an ad accepting the fact that perfection can never truly be achieved, only strived for – and led me to an exchange of views with the then boss of Toyota (GB) that turned out to be a career changing one (for me at least!).
Sadly, Toyota’s brave statement is all too real as its goal of near perfection fades a little further into the distance with more than 8 million of its vehicles being recalled and questions being asked by world leaders of our supposedly super-ethical governments.
Trust me, this is not “I told you so” time! With experience in crisis management, my head says I should feel angry that road users have been put at risk by another corporate giant trying to cover up its mistakes. My heart is in an entirely different place. As a former member of the Toyota (GB) PR team I can only marvel at the way Scott Brownlee and his colleagues have taken on an extraordinary task as they struggle to keep up with the deluge of information and meet the requests that face them in the battle to provide accurate information to the UK’s media.
The issue has allowed the world’s media to hunt down another global corporate giant – strangely the one which has recently become the world’s leading automotive producer with accelerated (sorry) growth at a time when the world’s economy is going to hell in a handcart (or GM vehicle); turning its insatiable search for “public interest” and the next moral panic into a feeding frenzy of high-handed hysteria. Oh, and now the bandwagon (manufactured in America) is well and truly rolling, with news that apparently Corollas veer to the left. I’ve been there and worn that t-shirt too in the late ’90s - BBC Watchdog’s Ford Sierra steering problem garbage anyone?
So is my sympathy out of misplaced loyalty, a subconscious twitch from my PR ’spin’ muscle, or something more tangible? From experience, the public and media fantasy completely overwhelms reality and irreparable short, and possibly medium, term damage is being inflicted on Toyota’s reputation. Sure, they have had quality issues – when you are mass producing that number of vehicles for owners who want to continually pay less and get more for the price, what do you expect? But they admitted they had quality issues, in their starkly contrite way, nearly two years ago. Whatever they say or do now, they can’t win.
But let’s just look at the numbers for a moment. More than 8 million Toyotas are being recalled. 8 MILLION. The number of worldwide reported serious incidents relating to the alleged problems will be a fraction of one percent of that figure. Yet Toyota are recalling 8 million vehicles , with all the related costs, because of a problem that may never affect many of those cars.
As Head of Public Relations at RAC Motoring Services I was frequently under pressure to reveal the ‘most reliable/unreliable vehicle’ data. It just doesn’t work like that! Reliability, like car technology and the automotive industy in general, is a complex issue. A point eloquently made by Heather Yaxley, another Toyota PR alumni, in explaining the frustrations facing the current Toyota PRs. I can also report first-hand that, as pointed out by fellow RAC communicator Edmund King – now President of the AA – there are millions of vehicles recalled every year and many millions more that are subject to component replacement during routine servicing to rectify minor faults identified by manufacturers. Very few motorists, and only the better informed journalists, are even aware this happens. It’s certainly no big deal, even if it’s a big cost for the carmaker.
In reality, regardless of how much testing is done in the lab or in quality control, some faults will only appear once a vehicle is on the road. The good news is that almost all of these faults are picked up early – often by RAC, AA and other roadside technicians - and manufacturers take action quickly.
In this case, Toyota have unquestionably been too slow off the mark to deal with an issue that has now incubated into a crisis. They’re certainly not alone – look at Cadburys in 2006 with a Salmonella scare that took too long to report. But again, look at the Toyota timeline.
While they have clearly been aware of the issues for some time, an 8 million product recall is not something that any right-minded organisation will undertake without irrefuteable evidence. Add to that the heirarchical, procedure-driven, and generally inflexible culture of Japanese corporations (something I’ve witnessed first-hand). Combine it with hyper-litigious American culture fuelled by insurance urban myths, and you have a crisis waiting to happen and a virtually impossible mission for the communicatiors. But once the tipping point of evidence plus pressure was reached, Toyota initiated a global recall and repair programme in a matter of DAYS.
But most important of all, with 3,500 road deaths and 65,000 injuries daily on the world’s roads, it’s time to stop worrying about possibly faulty accelerators, questionably dodgy car mats and mildly inconsistent brakes. The biggest technical threat to all of us, and the real reason people should be forced to stop driving cars whoever makes them, is the nut behind the wheel.
