Police Raid Home of Ex-Mitsubishi Head
Monday, June 14, 2004

TOKYO — Police on Monday raided the home of the former president of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. who was arrested last week on suspicion of hiding auto defects.

Investigators searched Katsuhiko Kawasoe's home in Nagoya, 170 miles west of Tokyo, apparently looking for evidence to back up charges related to a cover-up of defects suspected in a 2002 fatal accident.

Kawasoe resigned in disgrace four years ago when the Tokyo-based automaker acknowledged having hidden auto defects for decades.

In the 2002 accident, a driver slammed into a building and died after the brakes on his Mitsubishi truck failed. Investigators suspect a clutch system defect that company officials are believed to have known about as early as 1996.

Kawasoe and other Mitsubishi officials failed to report the defect to authorities or carry out a recall, police said. The Mitsubishi truck unit admitted to the clutch defect this year.

Kawasoe, 67, and the others are in custody, and prosecutors are deciding whether to file official charges. They have been arrested on charges of professional negligence resulting in death, a conviction punishable by a prison term of less than five years or a fine of up to $4,500.


Mitsubishi Motors has announced several recalls in recent weeks and has acknowledged it did not make good on its 2000 promise to unveil all hidden defects. The president of the truck unit, Wilfried Porth, scheduled a news conference for later Monday to give more details of 97 design defects the company disclosed only recently.

Last month, five former and current Mitsubishi officials were charged in a separate fatal accident, the death of a pedestrian crushed by a wheel that rolled off a Mitsubishi truck in 2002.

Mitsubishi Motors' image has been badly hurt by the cover-up scandal. Sales in Japan are down nearly 60 percent from a year ago.

Police say Kawasoe and the others failed to follow orders from authorities to report auto defects, dealing only with reported problems dating back to March 1998 and choosing to overlook suspected clutch defects first noted in 1996.

Mitsubishi Motors has announced several revival plans in recent years, promising to beef up quality control under the guidance of its German-American partner DaimlerChrysler AG. But the spate of recalls has not ended.

Earlier this year, DaimlerChrysler decided not to inject any additional cash into the turnaround plans, and Mitsubishi Motors announced another plan last month with cash from the Mitsubishi group and other companies.

Mitsubishi reported a $2 billion loss for the fiscal year ended March 31, and it expects to stay in the red this fiscal year.

 

Wow that seems bad. I wonder if people know about this in the states. It seems to be a problem with trucks though. My sister just had a recall on her Mitsubishi Eclipse too. Let's see if any of these problems make it over seas. Hopefully not.

 

wow, thats TERRIBLE... its such a shame that someone had to die b/c these defects were never corrected... these people should facesome serious time in jail (imo) if this is tru

 

mitsubushi should concentrate on making tv's they make damn good tv's !!!

 

Sad. This was certainly not an honorable position...

Mitsubishi is quite diverse in their products...electronics to aerospace...consumer goods to industrial. They have a hand in many aspects of something. If my memory is still functioning, they may be comprable to Ford though Ford is a parent company not obviously associated with many products.

 

Wow, that's too bad. I have many friends who owns Mitsubishi cars and quite a few of them already went through a tranny. I heard Mitsubishi have weak trannies, and maybe it's true know that my friends(most of them) had to replace their tranny around 100k. I'll tell my friend to read this article. Thanks TLW!!

That's why I tell them Toyota all the way!!!

The good news is that 2 of my friends are considering trading their cars in for the new Scion TC if it's what they expect!!

 

I'm not sure I agree with the premise of this title thread....it never hurts to rid a company of its crooks.
Case in point....look at what happened at Hyundai once that company threw out the bunch of morons who were running it and got all-new management. It has gone from being one of the worst auto companies in the buisness (and the butt of jokes) to today being one of the best...only a couple of notches below Toyota / Lexus.

 

there are always bad guys everywhere... cheers for the investigators who found this out.

 

3 diamonds in trouble but i love their EVOs, TVs and pencils

 

never underestimate the power of greed

 

Mitsu is cancelling all warrenties on any EVOs tracked. Its a track car though Sad, I love the EVO.

 

A lot of people are going to lose their warranty then.

 

This is nothing new.......most auto manufacturers will not cover track use, drag racing, or motorsports in the standard factory warranty....and neither will some insurance companies.

 

how will they know that the car has been tracked or drag raced?

 

Interesting question...it is not always easy to prove. And with anti-lock brakes and stability control systems, it is not easy to determine speeds by the length and type of skid marks either. They put it in the warranty papers, though, mostly as a disclaimer.

Some newer cars ( I know that GM does this, and maybe some other companies, too ) have a "black box" with the other car computers similiar to those in aviation that record vehicle speeds, stop-and-go trips, g-forces, etc.... These have actually been used in courtroom trials to convict defendants who have been caught lying about the speeds they were doing in accident cases, civil suits, etc...and these convictions have been upheld on appeal.