Wall Street Journal: Toyota How will the massive recall over sudden acceleration affect Toyota's reputation for quality?

Wall Street Journal: Toyota How will the massive recall over sudden acceleration affect Toyota's reputation for quality?

The sad comment all Americans should be concerned about was the statement on Bloomberg by a Toyota spokesperson in which they said part of the problem was that they farmed out some of the work to non-Japanese companies and that the partner company that caused the accelerator problem was an American supplier - i.e. read: it's not a Japanese problem (primarily) but an American one. (As above mentioned by Steele, the US (read: GM, etc.) approach to car problems is to try and paper them over and, as shown in statistics on % of sales invested in R&D, the US companies were way below their Japanese rivals.)

Everyone can have a problem occur sometime, it's then how it's handled. I'll never forget a GM problem in the 80's with the engineering on a Pontiac. The company comment, as reported in the media, was they thought their money would better be spent on marketing than on engineering.

Hmmm...could this be part of America's job problem - consumption vs. investing??????

Or, as Pelosi and Obama would say - benefits and borrowing before investing and jobs.