Now's A Good Time To Buy Toyota

On our drive to Ottawa to catch the Senators play the Pittsburgh Penguins, my buddy (an engineer) and I talked about a bunch of things and one of the topics was Toyota. According to him, if you've always wanted to buy a Toyota, you'd be smart to buy one now since they have to rebuild their brand. There are deals to be had.

We both agreed it was absurd for Toyota to be put in this position. 30 years to build a stellar reputation and one faulty mechanical issue to destroy it?

Dumb. Thank the media and U.S. government for their part in this. Of course, the government was acting like any corporation since they, you know, essentially own General Motors (the Lada of North America at this point). So what better way to further superficially prop up a piece of crap product in addition to bail outs) by bashing your main competitor to death? It's just good business from their perspective.

Now it's coming out that it was, as some asserted when the story first came out, possibly driver error that launched this hysteria to which the media and government were all too willing to capitalize on. It's called pedal misapplication and it does remind me, now that it's been brought up, of the "sudden acceleration" problem with Audi in the 1980s.

I was skeptical about the Toyota scare all along. A company like Toyota doesn't suddenly become terrible and inept. As for the Americans, maybe it's time they stop the bull shit of bringing back retro cars of the 1970s repackaged for the 2010s and start using their talents in designing innovative cars.

Why are you still reading this post? Git!