We love our Toyotas….and so should you! Here’s the low down.

We love our Toyotas….and so should you!  Here’s the low down.

The IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rates a vehicle for how well it protects its occupants from front and side impacts, rollovers, and rear impacts.  The vehicles must also offer electronic stability control. And can we please leave all of this recall hoopla behind already?? The IIHS awarded Toyota with more Top Safety Picks than any other brand.  Models included are the Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Sienna, and Highlander. The Toyota Camry has been the best-selling passenger car in America for the last eight years so Toyota went with the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” theory. The Camry remains unchanged for the 2011 model year.

Here are a few more stats:

190-The number of feet of test track it takes for a Camry V6 to stop from 70 mph.

100%-The percentage of Toyota vehicles that now come standard with Star Safety System^™.

5-The number of advanced safety features that make up Star Safety System^™.

200-The number of engineers and technical associates that make up Toyota’s rapid response SMART Teams.

1,000,000-The amount in dollars that Toyota invests per hour on research and development to enhance the safety and technology of its vehicles.

In an age in which consumers don’t expect to have to maintain their cars and trucks anymore, Toyota may find itself increasingly investigating more consumer preference design defects in order to sway clear of safety problems before they actually become problems.

After suffering several major blows to its reputation in the past year, it was clear that Toyota in Tokyo gave its North American operations far too little authority and autonomy in dealing with quality, safety and overall engineering and management issues.

Its quality initiative is designed to take on all of these issues, existing and potential. It has added an extra league of management to train its workers. And about 1000 engineers were added to Toyota’s quality innovation activity. It’s stepping up evaluation of quality and safety problems from consumers’ points of view, therefore adding about four weeks to a typical new model’s development time.

Now, having studied about 3600 complaints of “unintended acceleration” so far, Toyota has found no reproducible cases, and it may be changing the public’s view on this issue after a couple of sincere, though ridiculous “demon runaway car” claims. Toyota has spent two days, so far, trying to convince us that its thorough quality and safety programs are about to get much better. It desperately wants to salvage its hard-fought reputation Unspeakable as it may be, the unintended acceleration issue looks to me like it’s largely the product of a quickly aging Toyota buyer base. There have been no such cases regarding its Scion youth brand.

While there’s a clear distinction now between consumer satisfaction with a model’s lack of quality defects and the quality of its design, including ergonomics and ease of use, the distinction may be going away. Thanks largely to Toyota’s leadership, consumers now are conditioned to expect zero defects and such ease of use that the car should virtually drive itself and let its owner text. After all, nobody even reads owners manuals, anymore.

Under Toyota’s newly enhanced system, it gives priority to identifying and solving problems when safety is involved, as compared with quality problems that simply annoy the driver. Even the floor mat issue that began Toyota’s woes is the result of consumer “preference” for stacking more than one mat on the driver’s floorpan, or changing into winter mats without proper installation has become a problem that endangers safety.

We are your “Whatever it Takes Dealer”.  We do the deals the other guys won’t!  Come pick our your new 2011 Toyota from the Milton Ruben Superstore.  Let us prove to you why we stand by the Toyota brand, and why you should too!

Tags: ga toyota, milton ruben, sc toyota, southeast toyota dealers, star safety system, top safety picks, toyota safety
Posted in New Toyotas, Toyota Safety | Comments Off on We love our Toyotas….and so should you! Here’s the low down.