Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Toyota’s reputation for quality and safety continues to take a beating, not only in the United States but throughout the world. The automaker is now recalling approximately 43,000 cars in China to repair a defect that could cause the engine’s oil to leak. The Lexus ES 350, which is one of the eight Toyota models blamed in the United States for unintended acceleration problems, is one of the models included in the China recall. The others are the Lexus RX 350, the Highlander sports utility vehicle, and the Previa minivan.

Toyota’s latest recall in China comes just months after it announced its largest ever recall in that country. On August 24, 2009, Toyota recalled some 688,000 vehicles for faulty electric window systems. Less than one month later, Toyota announced its plans to recall 3.8 million vehicles in the United States because of their potential to accelerate unintentionally and speed out of control. The recall was later expanded to encompass 4.3 million vehicles, which is one of the largest safety recalls of all time, anywhere.

The recalls have landed Toyota in a public relations crisis at a time when the company is already financially distressed. Years of denying the unintended acceleration problem culminated when California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and his family were killed when their rented ES 350 sped out of control on a San Diego highway. That incident, which claimed the lives of four people, prompted Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda to issue a dramatic public apology.

Just three months after assuming office as the company’s leader last summer, Toyoda said the company, which his grandfather founded in 1937, had betrayed the tradition of quality that helped it become the world’s largest automaker.

Now, Toyoda said, his company is barely able to navigate the worst economic downturn since its founding – a shameful state of affairs that put Toyota a step away from “capitulation to irrelevance or death” and left it, in his dramatic words, “grasping for salvation.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 11:28 am and is filed under Legal, News, automobile accident, product liability, recalled products, safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.