People with long memories may recall that Toyota isn't the first foreign automaker to face serious questions about the safety and reliability of its vehicles. In the 1980s, German manufacturer Audi had built an upscale reputation in the US, and was selling about 85,000 cars annually. Then in November 1986, the popular CBS TV newsmagazine "60 Minutes" ran a segment on Audi "sudden acceleration," featuring heart-rending stories of a mother who claimed she accidentally ran over and killed her 6 year old child when her Audi unexpectedly accelerated out of control. The TV story even included a dramatic segment showing an Audi accelerator pedal moving down by itself.
Public reaction was swift. Audi's sales plummeted to 15% of pre-crisis levels. The carmaker faced an avalanche of class-action lawsuits (one of which, filed in 1987, is still winding through the court system) and was nearly driven out of the US market. Audi's US sales took 15 years to recover, regaining 1985-era sales figures in 2000.
While the stories about Audi were terrifying, there's one major difference between the Audi and Toyota crises: there was never any substantiation that Audi cars were defective. The "60 Minutes" segment was later shown to be staged: an expert witness for a plaintiffs' lawyer modified a transmission and filled it with compressed fluid to produce the effect. And the awful story of the mother who accidentally killed her little boy? The police report in which she admitted that she had put her foot on the accelerator was omitted from the TV show.
Of course, thus far it seems that many of the stories about Toyota defects seems to be true, in particular my earlier blog post in which an experienced driver, a CHP officer, lost control of his Lexus. However, it is always useful in these situations to examine very carefully the potential motivations of people interviewed in media stories about product defects. (Some related links appear below.)
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_18.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-04/audi-s-1980s-scare-may-mean-lost-generation-for-toyota-sales.html
http://www.automobile.com/audi-investigated-for-unintended-acceleration.html
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