Cars and Drivers

Toyota, Guilty As Sin, Tries To Muddy The Waters

Toyota (TM), clearly the builder of millions of cars with brake and accelerator problems, has tried to change the public’s focus away from  its recalls, government investigations, and what will be multibillion liability suits. The Japanese car company says ABC News showed a demonstration of an Avalon…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published March 8, 2010, 3:52pm ET · 1 min read

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Toyota (TM), clearly the builder of millions of cars with brake and accelerator problems, has tried to change the public’s focus away from  its recalls, government investigations, and what will be multibillion liability suits. The Japanese car company says ABC News showed a demonstration of an Avalon model’s accelerator problems by using a parked car rather than one in motion. ABC is almost certainly guilty of the charge.

But, ABC’s presentation of the Toyota defects has nothing to do with the real problem which is  that the firm’s cars have manufacturing problems and Toyota may have been slow to tell that to the public and the federal government. There have even been accusations that the company actively covered up its safety issues.

Toyota’s attempts to shift the spotlight from its mistakes is a classic public relations ploy, and that makes the world’s largest car company look as if it is doing whatever it can to cover-up its mistakes.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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