The Toyota implosion…what it really means.

[Blue_Tires]

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 1/30/10, 6:30PM) Detroit. A corporate image for a company directly involved with consumers is a very fragile thing. A savvy company can carefully cultivate and nurture an image over a period of years. It can forge an identity by exploiting its nuances and crafting its effectiveness, and it can even create an aura for itself that may or may not be completely true, but if done expertly enough can convince legions of consumer/believers that you are who you say you are.

Over the past 35-plus years Toyota has burnished one overriding message into consumers’ minds in this country, and that message revolves around the idea that Toyota-built cars and trucks are the highest quality vehicles on the road, and that if consumers adhere to by-the-book maintenance schedules they just do not break. Ever.

And Toyota has enjoyed considerable success in this market by riding that reputation for all it was worth, as more and more consumers bought into the idea that - though bland transportation conveyances for the most part - Toyotas just wouldn’t let you down.

Until the events of last week, that is.

Actually, last week was the culmination of a series of negative events having to do with quality – or the lack of same – that has vexed Toyota for years now. There was the oiling-sludge problem in a brace of their engines. And there was the severe rust problem in Toyota pickup trucks, to the point that the spare tire carriers would simply fall out and on to the road it was so pronounced, just to name a few of the most noteworthy examples.

But Toyota skated through these “hiccups” as they quickly and for the most part quietly addressed consumers’ problems and moved on, escaping the harsh light of a frenzied media too busy holding the domestic manufacturers accountable for myriad transgressions, both real and imagined. For years and years if there was ever a Toyota recall the news of it would quickly come and go, while in comparison, if there was ever a recall from a domestic manufacturer it was the top story on Internet news sites and leading the evening television news for days.

As I wrote about it in The United States of Toyota, there was a blatant bias at work in the media that fueled the notion that Toyota=Good and Detroit=Bad – not that Detroit didn’t contribute to its atrocious quality reputation, because it emphatically did – and Toyota’s heretofore impenetrable and unimpeachable reputation for quality could never be sullied by a few rusted pickups here and there. After all, its cars and trucks – and its reputation – were bullet proof...

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