Remember? It wasn't long ago people/media were throwing Toyota/Lexus under the bus, every other Toyota was crashing out of control and Toyota was being questioned on Capital Hill. Remember this witch hunt? Remember the runaway Prius? Cars crashing in driveways etc etc? The forum hysteria, fuel to the "I hate Toyota/Lexus" fire? Didn't Lahood say trade in your Toyota's or some crazy crap?

Funny to this day how they were found innocent and it was swept under the rug with hardly a buzz.

 

Funny story, I was just talking about this with my coworkers.
I just had a lady called into our Toyota dealer the other day, she crashed into a pole and blamed her Prius's accelerator pedal. She went on for about 20 min saying that she doesn't feel safe in her car and that Toyota should buy her car back. We ended having to explain to her that NASA performed numerous tests and found no fault in the accel pedal and that it was mostly hype.

We still get tons of recalls in everyday at our dealer but I say for the most part the hysteria is all gone now, people are back to buying Toyota/Lexus and Toyota cars are still safer than anything GM brings outs(Chevy Volt catching on fire or steering wheel falling off)

 

I was in a Jiffy Lube about a year and a half ago, right after the hysteria died down, but when it was still fresh in the minds of people who paid attention. There were about 3 people talking and two of them had a Toyota, and they were all saying they still believe Toyota is the best brand out there and the SUA coverage was stupid and didn't see what the fuss was about.

My whole family, which has so many Toyotas that Akio would be jealous, never really paid attention to any of the recall hubub and went along our business. Toyota didn't lose any respect in my family.

 

I talked to my local service tech about it.

Many people came to the dealership during the apex of the recalls.

People would complain about anything, and as soon as the dealership inspected their cars and found nothing wrong, they left without further complaints.

If there was something really serious that compromised my safety, I'd raise Hell. My service tech said most people walked away knowing there was no "big deal" in hand.



Most people just complained to get a free oil change or car wash.

 

I'm like you guys it appears and didn't get caught up in the hysteria. Interesting tidbit perhaps... My 2006 RX400h had two safety recalls due and I finally took it in last week to have them done. The first was the infamous "floor mat clip", but the other was replacement of the "intelligent power module" and some related resistor that may not have been soldered down well... Neither worried me, but I got the work done. Initialing some of the paperwork, I noticed nearly $4K in retail parts cost and $1K labor for that second safety recall item that I didn't have to pay for. You can bet I'll use this as another example where Toyota/Lexus stands behind their cars (and one that is 7 years old) and my confidence in the brand.

 

A little off-topic, maybe, but I can clearly remember many media-attacks, much older than the recent Toyota ones, that harmed or doomed the reputation of some vehicles. In 1985, media-attacks on the Audi 5000 for so-called "runaway" acceleration (the same thing some recent Toyotas were accused of) did great harm, not only to the 5000's reputation, but to Audi's U.S.-market reputation as well (though, IMO, Audi, in those days, did, IMO, have rather poor build-quality). Similiar attacks, earlier, accused GM pickups and their fuel-tanks of being unsafe in side-impact crashes, but the media admitted that the tests were staged. Ford products, for years, had poorly-designed automatic-transmission shift-indicators that slipped around and did not indicate the correct gear. They were recalled by the millions., and there was at least some truth to those charges, but somewhat overdone.

Some media-attacks, though, were accurate. The cars involved pretty-much deserved the rap they got. The Ford Pinto's El-Cheapo rear-frame/volatile gas-tanks, the Chevy Vega's self-destructing engine and body-rust, and the unstable, dangerous early-60s Chevy Corvair were all good examples.

 

And to think, it all started because an off-duty police officer driving his family around couldn't think to hit the start/stop button. At least that's when I first heard about it.

 

With a runaway engine, hitting the stop button (or turning the key off) probably isn't the best reaction......it will take out the power-steering and power-brakes with the engine. Twisting the key too far back could also, of course, lock the steering-wheel. A better and safer reaction, IMO, is to shift into neutral. That will keep the engine running, keep steering and brakes going, and the fuel-regulators will (probably) prevent it from going past the red-line far enough to incur engine-damage.

 

Lol i remember this. Dam noobs can not drive

 

^This. Lol

 

LOL what a throw back!!! I remember when ever there was a Prius on the road near me almost everyone would try to get away from it. Funny how stupid drivers can affect a company so greatly.

 

or shifting to neutral, or the dealer putting the correct floor mats in the car

 

and then the govt piled on to help their fraudulent investment in gm and chrysler

 

True. And the media frenzy surrounding those were actually more nuts than what happened to Toyota.

 

I always thought all of that was just human errors and everyone want to get in on the scams. Then it got blown wayyyyyyy out of proportion

If it is in fact a real engineering issues, with the millions of Toyota made cars on the road, every street corner would have a wrecked Toyotas. Not just the one or two here and there

Toyota is smart, learned from the Audi incident back in the 80s. You never blame the customers for their errors, just accept it and it will pass over time.