Spotlight: Toyota Hearings

Congress may be struggling to pass much legislation these days, but its members remain masters at summoning indignation. As political theater, the first few days of congressional hearings into Toyota's customer-safety crisis had it all: testy exchanges, Clintonian hairsplitting, obnoxious grandstanding--even multiple references to Marisa Tomei's automotive wizardry in My Cousin Vinny. On Feb. 24, Toyota president Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company's founder, sat before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to apologize. "Quite frankly, I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick," he said, as members of the Japanese press and employees sporting Toyota buttons thronged the hallways outside. Yet the spectacle failed to answer a key question: whether Toyota has pinpointed the problems that caused it to recall more than 8 million cars, including over 6 million in the U.S., since last fall.

By hauling Toyoda and his deputies to Capitol Hill for a public flogging, House members got to vent their outrage at the company's sclerotic response to quality issues ranging from troublesome floor mats to sticky gas pedals to faulty brakes. Committee members asserted that Toyota has failed to sufficiently address the possibility that the computers in its cars could be causing problems. Toyota executive Jim Lentz insisted on Feb. 23 that the company has identified the defects responsible for some 2,600 instances of sudden, unintended acceleration--resulting in 34 deaths--since 2000. But he also conceded that he was "not totally" certain. To safeguard against further occurrences, Lentz said Toyota would install brake-override systems in its new vehicles and retrofit many older models.

None of that was any comfort to Rhonda Smith, a retired social worker from Tennessee who, during tearful testimony, recounted a 2006 incident in which her Lexus ES350 accelerated uncontrollably. "Shame on you, Toyota, for being so greedy, and shame on you, NHTSA, for not doing your job," said Smith, referring to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whose apparently lax oversight has made it a target of the inquiry.

Toyoda's appearance is the culmination of a month of unrelenting bad news for the company. On the eve of the hearings, a damaging July 2009 memo emerged in which Toyota execs boasted of $100 million in savings garnered through a limited 2007 recall. The company also announced that it had been subpoenaed by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a federal grand jury in New York because of the sudden-acceleration issues. Toyoda vowed to "work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers." But he has a long ride ahead.