TOYOTA FIGHTS BACK – AT 9:28 A.M. ET:  Toyota doesn't need our help to defend it.  But the truth needs our help to defend it.  The tendency of the mainstream media to bash corporations and exalt "victims" has led to a distortion of reality.  There are bad corporations, and good ones.  There are real victims, and false ones.

Toyota's first response to the "unintended acceleration" claims was the response of a corporation trying to prove it was responsible.  There were immediate, massive recalls.  The president of the company went around, Obama-like, apologizing.  There was all that Japanese bowing.

But as we've learned more and more, we realize that the truth is more elusive.  Yesterday we ran a report pointing out that "unintended acceleration," presumably a defect in cars, is actually related quite closely to the age of the driver.  (Everyone knows that Toyotas don't like older people.)  And Toyota itself, apparently realizing that was about to be hustled by lawsuits, is starting to strike back, as AP reports:

SAN DIEGO | Toyota Motor Corp. dismissed the story of a man who claimed his Prius sped out of control on the California freeway, saying Monday that its own tests found the car's gas pedal and backup safety system were working fine.

The automaker stopped short of saying James Sikes had staged a hoax last week but asserted that his account did not square with a series of tests it conducted on the gas-electric hybrid.

"We have no opinion on his account, what he's been saying, other than that the scenario is not consistent with the technical findings," spokesman Mike Michels said at a press conference.

It turned out that Sikes has a checkered past and a poor reputation in business.

There have been charges that much of the Toyota "scandal" was cooked up by General Motors and its government allies, but I've seen no direct proof of that. 

The fact is that we go through periodic "unintended acceleration" scares, just as we go through other kinds of "scares" that turn out to be greatly exaggerated.  Remember the swine-flu epidemic? 

We'll continue to follow this.  We saw the Audi destroyed in the United States by sensationalist reporting over "unintended acceleration" that didn't exist.  That cost a lot of jobs.  If a product truly is defective, action obviously must be taken.  But beware the false charge, and the financial interests behind it.

March 16, 2010