Management Issues in TOYOTA

Toyota Motor Corp.'s quality crisis deepened Tuesday, as U.S. regulators accused the company of dragging its feet on fixing defective gas pedals and threatened civil penalties and further reviews of Toyota products.

The move means that Toyota's efforts to address its biggest-ever safety and public-relations mess are far from over. Last week, the administration indicated it had no issues with how Toyota had responded to the sudden-acceleration reports, which led the company to recall about six million vehicles and have been linked to at least five fatalities.

“While Toyota is taking responsible action now, it unfortunately took an enormous effort to get to this point,” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said Tuesday in a statement. “We're not finished with Toyota and are continuing to review possible defects and monitor the implementation of the recalls (After the recall, pg.12, 1pg).”

Toyota's accelerator problem is the costliest car safety issue-and corporate disaster-in automotive history. It certainly dwarfs the sudden acceleration issue that hit Audi long ago, or the Firestone tire problem that destroyed the sales of Ford's Explorer or those long-ago issues that created Ralph Nader's book, Unsafe at Any Speed.

And there will be a great cost: incentives to get customers buying Toyota's again when the problems have been solved at the factory; money to keep the wounded dealers alive, and money to pay for the recall work. We're probably talking about a cost in the billions-not millions-counting those incentives. That's money that won't go to developing new models, new hybrids, new electric cars. And we're not talking about the lawsuits, which will go on for years.

Even as Toyota now finds itself the target of an increasingly hyped-up inquisition about "public safety," skeptical consumers are asking the commonsense question: If public safety is so important, then why isn't Congress asking about the dangers ...