What I see is the fact that this is the largest recall ever undertaken by an international car manufacturer.

MSNBC had a slide show of The 10 Biggest Auto Recalls in the US at 10 Biggest Auto Recalls. I opened the site and collected the URL to post here, but when I tested it in the preview, I got a "Page Not Found." Returning to the MSNBC main site (Business|Autos) the link posted also gives "Page Not Found." Apparently they didn't want me telling you about it.

But since I copied the page:

10: Honda
Number of vehicles recalled: 3.7 million
Year of recall: 1995

9: Volkswagen
Number of vehicles recalled: 3.7 million
Year of recall: 1972

8: General Motors
Number of vehicles recalled: 3.7 million
Year of recall: 1973

7: Ford
Number of vehicles recalled: 4 million
Year of recall: 1972

6: Ford
Number of vehicles recalled: 4.5 million
Year of recall: 2009

5: Ford
Number of vehicles recalled: 4.5 million
Year of recall: 2005

4: Toyota
Number of vehicles recalled: 5.4 million
Year of recall: 2009

3: General Motors
Number of vehicles recalled: 5.8 million
Year of recall: 1981

2: General Motors
Number of vehicles recalled: 6.7 million
Year of recall: 1971

1: Ford
Number of vehicles recalled: 7.9 million
Year of recall: 1996

Details are given for each of the above recalls, and I'll leave the link in case it's just down for an update. Some were comparable, and some much less serious than the recent Toyota recall, especially in terms of safety. Several of them were addressed promptly enough the get the fixes in place before there were significant numbers of "adverse experiences," but a couple - IIRC - did display signs of some delays that suggest a lack of enthusiasm by the makers.


Relative to the lack of response - and/or excessive delays in respoding - by Toyota:

I've dealt with quite a few individuals in US companies, and in a few other "western" companies, who "stonewalled," ignored, or just blathered uninelligibly when asked a direct question.

In many such cases, the unspoken answer was "my boss - or his boss - will have my ass if I tell you."

Uniformly, in my own direct experience, when individuals in Japanese companies were unresponsive or evasive, the unspoken answer was just "it's not my place to speak."

In other words, the culture withholds authority and suppresses free communication. Within limits, this may be a good thing for the worker, since it also diverts responsibility to others; but for an outsider it can be nearly impossible to find who's "place" it is to give an answer. Often, it seems, by the time one gets far enough up the chain, no one who's place it might be has an answer since the problem exists at a level unseen by those at higher (cultural or administrative) echelons.

I can't be sure to what extent this is part of Toyota's current difficulties; but of course I have my own suspicions.

John