Quotulatiousness

April 4, 2024

I feel you, Sarge …

Filed under: Personal — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I had to take my 2006 Toyota Tacoma in to the shop on Monday because the power steering had clearly gone … turning the wheel had become an unpleasant “armstrong ungeared” experience. The initial estimate was over $5000 to fix, as it was quite an involved repair, but I swallowed hard and signed the estimate. I got a call from the shop early Wednesday afternoon, but it wasn’t the cheery “the work’s done” message I was expecting, but a much more depressing “the truck’s frame is rotted and the vehicle is probably not roadworthy”.

The initial $5000+ estimate was already going to rip the bottom out of my financial plans for the year, and there’s no chance of finding a replacement for anything even close to that price, so I’m without a personal vehicle for the first time in nearly 40 years (fortunately, Elizabeth will let me borrow her RAV4 whenever she doesn’t need it, so I’m not a permanent pedestrian).

After we took delivery of the truck on Halloween, 2005, we took a drive up to the southern reaches of Algonquin Park where I took a few photos of the new vehicle. It would rarely be this shiny again.
Honestly, this was an April Fool’s joke I never saw coming.

October 21, 2015

Toyota teases a Back to the Future pickup truck

Filed under: Business, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

October 21, 2015 is Back to the Future day, and Toyota is playing along with the theme:

In a press release from Toyota, Back to the Future co-creator and producer Bob Gale offers some background on the manufacturer’s partnership with the franchise. “Toyota stands apart for their nod to the future and the past with the auto technology depicted in the movies. When Toyota approached us about helping tell a bigger story about the future and innovation with the Mirai, we loved the direction — and who can resist Marty’s retro Toyota truck?”

Call the number on the screen to talk to Jimmy Joe Statler himself. He offers you three choices. Be sure to press 2 for a free license plate frame. He mentions that three customized BTTF Tacomas will be revealed at Hollywood & Highland in Los Angeles and Times Square in NYC. They are also doing a tour of Dallas, so keep your eyes peeled if you live nearby. No word on whether Toyota will release the flying cars seen in the window’s reflection at 00:19 in the video.

We don’t know if the custom Tacoma will be produced for sale, but it should be easy enough for you to make one yourself. Just make sure you include those sweet KC lights.

October 14, 2015

Toyota’s ISIS problem

Filed under: Japan, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Diplomat, Franz-Stefan Gady looks at the problem for Toyota because their vehicles have become the favourites of ISIS and other terrorist groups:

The United States has launched an investigation to determine how the terror group ISIS was able to acquire a large number of Toyota pickup trucks and SUVs ABC News reported this week.

Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, the world’s second-largest auto maker, has pledged full cooperation with U.S. authorities and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

“We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” according to a D.C.-based spokesperson of Toyota. However, “it is impossible for Toyota to completely control indirect or illegal channels through which our vehicles could be misappropriated,” he added.

According to Toyota sales data, the number of Hilux and Land Cruisers sold tripled from 6,000 in Iraq in 2011 to 18,000 sold in 2013. However, sales dropped to 13,000 in 2014.

Toyota Hilux pickup trucks – a lightweight virtually indestructible vehicle – have been prominently featured in various ISIS propaganda videos and played an important role in ISIS’ conquests of large stretches of Iraqi territory last summer by acting as a force multiplier.

Armed with a .50 caliber machine gun the Hilux truck’s maneuverability provided insurgents quickly with close-range fire support during their attacks. Back in 2010, the counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen referred to the Hilux as “a modern version of light cavalry. They move weapons into positions to fire, and can also shift people around very quickly, with a quick dismount.”

Full disclosure: I’m currently driving a ten-year-old Toyota pickup truck (a Tacoma, which I think is the North American version of the Hilux). My next vehicle is likely to be another Toyota pickup truck. They may not be technically indestructible, but I’ve been very impressed with the performance and durability of my particular vehicle.

April 2, 2014

Comparing scandals – Toyota’s phantom acceleration and GM’s ignition switches

Filed under: Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:10

David Harsanyi offers this comparison and says it’s another reason governments shouldn’t own businesses:

In February 2010, the Obama Administration’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told America, without a shred of evidence, that Toyota automobiles were dangerous to drive. LaHood offered the remarks in front of the House Appropriations subcommittee that was investigating reports of unintended-acceleration crashes. “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it,” he said, sending the company’s stock into a nosedive.

Even at the time, LaHood’s comments were reckless at best. Assailing the competition reeks of political opportunism and cronyism. It also illustrates one of the unavoidable predicaments of the state owning a corporation in a competitive marketplace. And when we put LaHood’s comment into perspective today, it’s actually a lot worse. Not only did the Obama administration have the power and ideological motive to damage the largely non-unionized competition, it was busy propping up a company that was causing preventable deaths.

[…]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s acting chief David Friedman testified that GM never told them that faulty switches were at the root of the airbag problem. Fine. Before plowing billions of tax dollars into saving the United Automobile Workers, did the Car Czar or any other Obama officials take extra care to review DOT records to insure that taxpayers would not be funding the preventable deaths of American citizens? Would DOT or Holder exhibit the same zealousness for safety when it came to GM as they did when it came to Toyota? In the midst of the bailout debate and subsequent “turnaround,” news of a coverup and major recall would have been a political disaster.

So it’s difficult to understand why this isn’t a huge scandal. If every obtuse utterance by an obscure Republican congressman gets the media juices flowing, surely the possibility of this kind of negligence is worth a look. Can anyone with access to the administration ask some of these questions? Because if you take credit for “saving” a company (actually, an “industry,” as no one would ever driven again if Obama hadn’t saved the day) you also get credit for “saving” the real-life unscrupulous version of the company. “I placed my bet on American workers,” Obama told union workers in 2012. “And I’d make that same bet again any day of the week. And now, three years later that bet is paying off.” Betting $80 billion of someone else’s money to prop up sympathetic labor unions isn’t exactly fraught with political risk. Unless it turns out that your administration was less concerned about the safety defects of the company you owned than the company you disliked. That would be corruption.

August 25, 2010

Bans on texting while driving have not measurably improved highway safety

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:34

This report should come as no real surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention:

The two biggest highway-safety issues right now, as far as Washington is concerned, are runaway Toyotas and distracted driving. But what if these aren’t the most important factors driving the nation’s annual highway death toll, which averages about 100 fatalities a day?

That’s the view of Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who says the U.S. Transportation Department, Congress and the media have gotten sidetracked by issues like texting while driving.

“There’s nothing rational about the way we set highway safety priorities,” Mr. Lund says in the Insurance Institute’s Aug. 21 “Status Report” newsletter.

Mr. Lund’s organization is the safety research and advocacy arm of the insurance industry. The IIHS has been critical of the government’s highway safety policies over the past few years, usually arguing that the government wasn’t moving fast enough to require better crash-prevention technology from auto makers.

Mr. Lund and the Insurance Institute also say recent laws banning motorists from using mobile phones behind the wheel don’t correlate with a significant reduction in accidents.

“You’d think from the media coverage, congressional hearings, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s focus in recent months that separating drivers from their phones would all but solve the public-health problem of crash deaths and injuries,” he wrote. “It won’t.”

July 31, 2010

USDOT holding back Toyota report because it’s too favourable to Toyota?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Toyota has been claiming for quite some time that they have found no fault in their cars that could cause unintended acceleration. The US government’s report is reported to support that claim, but officials have been delaying the release of that information:

Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation have at least temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota Motor Corp. in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, according to a recently retired agency official.

George Person, who retired July 3 after 27 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in an interview that the decision to not go public with the data for now was made over the objections of some officials at NHTSA.

“The information was compiled. The report was finished and submitted,” Mr. Person said. “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it,” he added, referring to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair, said NHTSA is still reviewing data from the Toyota vehicles the agency is examining. “Its review is not yet complete. The investigation remains ongoing,” she said.

It could be suspected that the reason the government doesn’t want to release the report is that it pretty much exonerates Toyota after their trial-by-media over the sudden acceleration issue. The US government’s holdings in GM and Chrysler make them effectively competitors with Toyota, and the media has done a fine job of trying to depress Toyota sales (to indirectly benefit GM and Chrysler).

But that would be an unfair thing to suspect, wouldn’t it?

March 22, 2010

Doubting the story about the runaway Prius

Filed under: Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:55

Michael Fumento looks at the public details about the “runaway” Prius:

Now let’s recap just one of my findings in the Forbes.com piece that the CHP report doesn’t deal with because it concerns later events.

The 911 dispatcher, as you can hear on the Web, repeatedly begs Sikes to either stop the engine with the ignition button or put the gear into neutral. Sikes refused to do either, later giving various bizarre reasons. “I was afraid to try to [reach] over there and put it in neutral, he told CNN. “I was holding onto the steering wheel with both hands — 94 miles an hour in a Toyota Prius is fast.”

Yet:

# We know Sikes spent most of the ride with a cell phone in one hand.

# Sikes claimed at a press conference that he reached under the dash and yanked on the floored accelerator. I’m thin with arms the average American length, but fell three inches short. Sikes almost certainly can’t do what he claims, but nobody’s asked him to repeat the motion. In any event, it can hardly be done with both hands on the wheel.

# Finally in the 2008 Prius the shift knob is mounted on the dash expressly to allow shifting by merely reaching out with a finger.

Just what exactly does it take to convince the press?

Personally, I found the timing of the event to be a little too perfect for a certain narrative: exactly as the Toyota CEO was being subjected to the Star Chamber treatment by US lawmakers. A few days before or after that, I might have been willing to believe it was a genuine event, rather than (as it certainly appears now) a staged hoax.

Full disclosure: I’ve owned several Toyota vehicles, currently including my own Tacoma pickup truck and (as of last Wednesday) Elizabeth’s Matrix sedan.

February 26, 2010

Is the Corolla the new Pinto?

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

David Harsanyi examines the different treatment Toyota is getting from the US government (majority owner of the former #1 US automaker):

The Toyota horror is well on its way to transforming the Corolla into the Pinto of the 21st century. Who knows? Perhaps the worst is true about Toyota. Perhaps it is hiding something. Maybe Toyota thought it was infallible. Maybe it is evil. Right now, though you might not know it, it’s all just a bunch of maybes.

There have been to this point 2,600 reported incidents of “sudden unintended acceleration” reported to Toyota — a company that used to sell 9 million cars yearly, most of them in the United States. This yet-to-be defined glitch — maybe a floor mat sticking — has reportedly caused more than 30 deaths.

What we do know is that anyone involved in a Toyota-driven accident now has a scapegoat. And, if they’re smart, a lawyer.

All of a sudden, Toyotas are dangerous. Edmunds.com, which reviewed more than 200,000 complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past decade, found that Toyota ranked fourth- best among the top 20 automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold.

General Motors came in six spots lower. Then again, GM is special — or, rather, developmentally disabled. Thus, the U.S. government has the majority stake (with funding extracted from taxpayers) in Toyota’s main competitor. It also has the power to drag the CEO of its chief rival to Washington to nearly badger him into cutting off a pinky in one of those ritual atonement ceremonies.

And while Toyota is being subjected to show trials, what would happen if an American car company had to announce a big recall? No need to wonder:

Then there is the administration. Less than a year ago, Ford — a private, non-government good ol’ American corporation — issued the largest single recall in its long history. A total of 4.5 million vehicles were recalled after it was learned that faulty switches were fire hazards.

At the time, the Obama administration’s overmatched Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gently prodded customers “to pay attention.” When news of Toyota’s problems began to emerge, before we even knew what it was all about, LaHood told Americans to “stop driving” them. (He later claimed to have misspoke.)

In spite of the media’s best efforts to blacken the brand, I’m still very happy with my Toyota Tacoma. If I had to go and buy another vehicle tomorrow, Toyota would still be my first stop, and would most likely be the brand I’d buy (Honda would be a distant second).

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