Toyota: The Sticky Pedals issue Part 1

Toyota has a history of 70 years and has earned a good reputation amongst the automobile industry over the past few decades. In early 1950’s Toyota was about to be bankrupted and also faced labour dispute but somehow managed to get out of the problems to
continue the journey it had in mind.

It was year 1970 as Automobile Industry had to face Air Pollution Standard and oil crisis which threatened the whole trade but Toyota gets through it by building cleaner and more fuel efficient cars. Again In 1980 Toyota faces Trade frictions and voluntary
exports once again but overcame all the difficulties.

Again in 1998 Toyota Motor America faced yet another hurdle as one of their gold plated brands, LEXUS entered the market with troublesome tires. The company spent over US$ 2.5 million to have the problem resolved as it introduced a centralised database.

…Continued o Part 2

Toyota’s management was aware of the fact that saving their brand from such a crisis was a big ask and they employed their best resources to resolve the issue.

Despite being the world’s largest car manufacturer, Toyota is on number four on the list of top 100 innovative companies with a margin growth of 10.7 and stock returns of 11.8 % through 19995 to 2005 as per the business week magazine.

Again in 2010 Toyota faced yet another problem and had to recall as many as 2.3 million vehicles just in America.  A total amount of 8.5 million vehicle owners had to visit the Toyota showrooms to get their cars checked. Company encountered a loss of 30
Billion Dollars which is more than its annual sales.

Problem that caused Toyota such a big loss was that few of its vehicles were fitted with faulty race paddles also termed as ‘’ Sticky Paddles ‘’ which reduces the vehicles ability to stop in time and has caused some serious accidents.

Total Affected Models causing sticky paddles include Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Highlander, Matrix, Prius, Rav 4, Sequola, Tacoma, Tundra, and Venza. Company fixed all the troublesome vehicles free of cost as some dealers in the US remain open 24 hour to handle
the workload. 

….Continued to Part 2

Posted by Ahmed Babar on Jan 8 2012. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry