Toyoda Takes Rap for Toyota Recall; Perfect Storm Continues

(MoneyWatch)  Toyota President Akio Toyoda literally and figuratively bowed to pressure to more prominently take responsibility for the Toyota gas-pedal recall and the expanding disaster.

According to news accounts, Toyoda bowed and apologized at a news conference in Japan that took place early this morning, East Coast time.

It had been in the back of my mind for a while now that the ritual Toyoda apology was overdue, and I said so in this space yesterday, Feb. 4. It turns out, there was an international chorus calling for Toyoda to step up and apologize.

My feeling is, even though it's too late for Toyota to contain the legal and public relations disaster, an apology might help symbolically, and it was expected, especially of a Japanese company.

The Toyota recall is generating its own "perfect storm" of bad publicity, with each new revelation adding fuel, like warm, moist air over the Gulf of Mexico.

This morning, Google listed 22.6 million entries for the search, "Toyota recall." In parallel, there are passionate online discussions on the topic. Even the official press web site for Toyota's U.S. subsidiary has gathered around 200 comments just since late December, although few if any appear to be from reporters and editors.

Like the red-state, blue-state political debate, online discussions about Toyota tend to be highly polarized. There are a lot of loyal Toyota customers who wouldn't consider American cars even now, versus a lot of buy-American partisans who point back to the days when "made in Japan" was a synonym for cheap and shoddy. There doesn't seem to be much persuasion going on, either way.

The one thing, alas, that both sides seem to agree on is that "The Media" have made the situation worse. I wrote the other day that I hoped the Toyota debacle would lay to rest the perception that the auto-writing community takes it easy on Toyota, but a quick look at online postings tells me that's a vain hope. For instance, the search, "Toyota sucks" turns up 950,000 entries. A lot of those save their choicest words for "The Media."

If I were Toyota, or Toyoda, even as I apologized, I would silently pray for some harmless "boy-in-a-balloon" sensation to divert the news cycle.

Photo: autoblog.com