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Why things went so wrong so fast for Toyota – and why the company seemed so slow put them right

When Catherine Block took her Toyota Aygo to her local dealer after a terrifying drive between Folkestone and Canterbury, she told mechanics: "It was a good job my brakes worked. Otherwise I would be dead." They laughed, she recalls. "They probably thought I was being melodramatic." This was hardly the case: during the 35-minute drive, she was able to drive up a steep hill at full pelt without pressing on the pedal once because the accelerator had stuck fast.

Block, a 28-year-old student, had already taken her car into the Toyota dealership at least three times last autumn because of the sticky accelerator. On her first visit, mechanics said the problem was caused by the floor mat, then they wondered if the specialist radio equipment she had installed was the cause. Eventually, at the beginning of December, the mechanics replaced the pedal and the problem seems to have been solved. The dealership said hers was an isolated case.

It has since emerged that Toyota had known about customers complaining about such "sticky" accelerator pedals in the UK since late 2008. Toyota admits that 26 of the cases it encountered in Europe had been reported as "customer satisfaction issues" at the time.

The company now admits that between November and January – the fault appears to surface during cold weather– 20 more vehicles were affected in the UK alone.

Car companies are obliged to alert the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa), which registers recalls on faulty cars, of any safety issue that may merit a recall. Toyota UK only went public following pressure from British government safety officials who were alerted by their US counterparts handling a deluge of complaints about stuck accelerators. The carmaker gave detailed information to Vosa on 22 January, leading to the recall of 180,000 cars in the UK last week.

Toyota's failure to tell its dealers about the fault is what angers Block most. "The dealer did not have all the information available. This was a one-off as far as I was concerned."

Since the fault is partly caused by wear and tear, as well as cold weather, she cannot be certain that the accelerator will not stick again. Toyota's public relations efforts, which accompanied its first public announcement in the UK about the faults late last month, have hardly re­assured her.

"I'm left in the dark – no one has bothered to contact me to check that the repair has worked. When I did ring the Toyota helpline, they said ring your dealer, who told me: 'It sounds like you know more about it than we do.'?"



When it finally came, Akio Toyoda's apology fell some way short of the dramatic mea culpa some had demanded from the Toyota president.

"I apologise from the bottom of my heart for all the concern that we have given to so many customers," he said, having emerged to address a global safety recall that threatens to inflict almost irreparable damage to his firm's brand.

But there were no tears, no lingering semi-prostration or pleas for forgiveness. The only bows of the evening were made in greeting, not contrition. Toyoda's performance was a case study in the subtle difference between an apology and an admission of culpability.

Still, his appearance on Friday came as a surprise. The 53-year-old, who was made president last June as the firm looked to its founding family to revive flagging sales, had for two weeks resisted calls to speak publicly about the biggest crisis in Toyota's 73-year history.

All the media had managed to cajole out of him before Friday was a rushed apology on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Appalled consumers, particularly in the US, made it clear that it was not the bold statement of reassurance that they were seeking.

By this weekend events had turned the pressure into an irresistible force: a $2bn global recall of more than 8m cars affected by a faulty accelerator; thre

Tags: Toyota, Business, Motoring, Technology, Japan, United States, World news, UK news, The Observer, Features

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How did Toyota veer so far off course? was originally published by Technology: Motoring | guardian.co.uk. Read the full story by clicking here.