Can Toyota recover? An internal email from a Toyota executive says the company needs to "come clean". The email is part of a much bigger batch in the hands of US regulators and they shatter the illusion of the company presenting itself as a business that looks after its customers.
The Times reports that Ian Miller who was then Toyota's vice president for public affairs, sent the email in response to comments by his Japanese colleague, Katsuhiko Kogane.
When Kogane sent an email saying the company "should not mention about the mechanical failures of the pedal, because the cause of the fault had not yet been identified and that a statement by Toyota would unsettle motorists", Miller replied, putting in caps to stress his concern: "We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. WE HAVE a tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models … The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean."
The company's woes were compounded with revelations that it knew all about the problems with its potential safety defects in its best-selling Prius model almost four years before the company issued its worldwide recall in January.
Toyota will survive, there is still a massive bank of good will to the company. But it will never recover its standing and place in the market without a complete overhaul of its sick inwardly focused culture.
no comment untill now