Toyota, all the troubles of Daihatsu
The crash test scandal discovered in April continues to spread. The number of affected models has risen to 64, of which 22 are sold by parent company Toyota. The president of Daihatsu, Soichiro Okudaira, has already admitted the facts and in a press conference in which there was no shortage of bows he apologized for "having betrayed the trust of customers"
The Japanese, it is common opinion, do things well. In the collective imagination they are dutiful like samurai and ready to do anything to espouse the corporate spirit. So much so that the death from overwork which often kills very young people known to modern medicine was codified for the first time in the Japanese archipelago ( karoshi ). It is no coincidence that when we talk about small and reliable cars, our minds usually turn to Japanese cars. In the last period, however, the Land of the Rising Sun has undergone a series of scandals that risk casting a shadow over the entire sector.
THE LATEST SCANDALS OF JAPANESE BRANDS
Above all, what overwhelmed Hino Motors Ltd, a manufacturer of trucks and buses, which had led the controlling parent company, the much better known Toyota, to distance itself from the conduct that led the company led by CEO Yoshio Shimo to falsify the data on releases for years, with the same company forced on several occasions to announce new stops on vehicle shipments abroad.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE TAKATA SCANDAL
Even more recent is the maxi recall of 270 thousand units of Volkswagen which brought back the pages of the calendar to 2017, the year of the scandal and consequent bankruptcy of the manufacturer Takata. The recall of the German car manufacturer in fact concerned a new tranche of models in which the technology of the Japanese manufacturer Takata is installed.
According to data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, "failures in the gas generator of the front airbags" could lead to "uncontrolled deployment and release of metal fragments that could injure occupants".
The nightmare of defective airbags produced by the Japanese manufacturer Takata has thus become forcefully back in the news. As anticipated, it was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2017 precisely because of the continuous malfunctions of its devices.
WHAT DAIHATSU HAS DONE WITH SAFETY TESTS
The latest to be overwhelmed by scandals over rigged tests was Daihatsu. There has been talk about it for several months and the latest results of the investigation have forced the Japanese company to block all deliveries.
This time, however, emissions have nothing to do with it. The results of safety tests were falsified. In short, the so-called crash tests. The investigation identified irregularities in “174 items within 25 test categories.” The number of affected models has now risen to 64, of which 22 are sold by parent company Toyota.
President Soichiro Okudaira has already admitted the facts and in a press conference in which there was no shortage of bows he apologized for "having betrayed the trust of customers". It is unlikely that he will remain in the driving seat of the brand controlled by Toyota until the end of 2023. What is certain is that, after Hino, this is the second scandal to overwhelm a brand of the Toyota group, moreover in the space of a few months. At the moment Toyota and Daihatsu have made it known that they are not aware of any accidents caused by counterfeiting, but the damage to their image is still significant.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/toyota-tutti-i-guai-di-daihatsu/ on Thu, 21 Dec 2023 06:41:46 +0000.