Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp. and grandson of the company’s founder, is facing a crisis: The Japanese automaker has stopped selling eight models in the U.S. and Canada because of a defect that causes sudden acceleration.
The
Wall Street Journal
reported
that Toyoda “had been worried that a backlash like the one he’s not facing over quality would hit Toyota sooner or later.”
The debacle raises a troubling question for Toyota’s leadership: Has it sacrificed quality in its push to capture global market share?
Toyoda’s “mission is all the more urgent” because of the company’s reputation as a leader in safety and reliability, the
Journal
report noted.
In a news conference immediately after taking over last June, Mr. Toyoda said the company erred in the last decade with an all-out push to become the world’s largest car maker, drifting away from its core value of focusing on the customer.
The
Journal
article said that in the fiscal year that ended in March 2009, Toyota had its first loss in 59 years and is expected to post another loss this year.
The Toyota that Mr. Toyoda inherited last June wasn’t the profitable, expanding powerhouse of the prior decade.
According to the
Journal,
Toyoda rarely appears in public or speaks with reporters. People who know him told the
Journal
that he isn’t avoiding the media; he is just spending a lot of time in the field.
A joint venture between Toyota and General Motors was dissolved last summer and involved the closing of a manufacturing plant in California. Now, the
Journal
noted, Akio Toyoda is trying to forge ties with Ford Motor Co. (Source:
Wall Street Journal,
Jan. 28, 2010.)
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