TOKYO, JAPAN — Toyota, which has come under intense scrutiny for its sundry recalls in the past two years, has switched its corporate direction gears twice in the last month, and is now, according to Satoshi Ozawa, Executive Vice President of its Boxy Designs Division, fully committed to maintaining its position as the biggest automaker in the world.
After three different sets of recalls in 2009 and 2010, Toyota announced in early October that it had decided to scrap its primary business, determining—but mainly hoping—there must be something they could design, manufacture and sell considering they employ over 65,000 people worldwide. But preferably something that remains stationary.
“Honestly,” said Ozawa, “we took a good, long look at ourselves, at what we’d done in the past few years. It was hard to admit, but, well, we finally decided that we just suck at making cars. I mean, 10 million units recalled for defective accelerator pedals?!” He chuckled. “I’m not talking about a defective hinge on the glove compartment. We’re talking about an accelerator…that…gets…stuck! And we hid it from the public.” Ozawa flops his hand on his forehead. “Ouchy. Then we had to pay out $20 million in claims. Double Ouchy.”
But Toyota’s ineptitude didn’t stop there, and in early 2010 1.5 million units were recalled due to brake fluid leaks, followed by another 150,000 recalled last week in Japan and Europe due to steering issues.
According to Lorna Hutchins, a spokesperson for Toyota, “We were not only failing, but failing on the biggies—accelerating, braking, and steering. Essentially what we were saying to the marketplace was that if you drive a Toyota and the accelerator sticks, don’t worry because you won’t be able to stop or steer anyway. That’s like buying a gun and being told, ‘We can’t promise you where the bullet’s gonna’ go, but it’s gonna’ go, and it’s gonna’ go really fast!’”
But as of this week, Toyota has recommitted itself to making spotty cars, trucks and SUVs, not because they believe they’ll get better at it, but because, magically, they reported a $3.6 billion profit in the fiscal first half, due primarily to sales of the Prius, where it’s now the highest selling car for the 17th straight month.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy,” said a bemused Billy Ozawa, an analyst in Toyota’s finance department. “I’m just, well…confused. We sold 18,000 Priuses and have recalled, like, 2 million cars. I thought I paid pretty good attention in grad school, but I can’t make these numbers work.” He lightened. “But I’m vested now, so who cares as long as the stock keeps climbing.”
Ozawa is thrilled that Toyota will continue to manufacture terrific-looking, mediocre automobiles in the future. Prior to its reported profit, Toyota had all but decided to get out of the automotive industry and re-focus its personnel, assets and capital elsewhere.
“We had a lot of high-level meetings about how to get rid of all these damn cars, and the different types of businesses we could get into,” said Ozawa, the memories making him visibly nauseous. “We thought about gathering up the unsold cars and creating ToyotaLand, an amusement park where kids could climb on the cars, hit ‘em with bats, wrap the exhaust pipes with bacon, throw eggs at them—all the stuff kids do to cars anyway. But at ToyotaLand they’d be allowed to do it. They could even eat inside of them, spill their shakes on the seats, put their muddy shoes on the dash. What kid wouldn’t want to destroy the inside of a new car, especially if they won’t get beaten for it on a cross-country car trip?
“We thought March could be known as Toyota Smeltering Month. We’d charge people to operate a crane to pick up a car and drop it in a big smelter. We’d sell off the metal and middle-aged men would get to operate heavy machinery. Win-win.
“Oh,” continued Ozawa, “there was the Toyota Olympics—steering wheel flinging, transmission lifting, Corolla wrestling. The sprinters were going to get chased by a runaway Camry; the swimmers would race in wiper fluid.” He grinned. “We’ll probably still do that one.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting
