I don’t think there was sabotage.
@Cruiser It is true that Toyota has been great at marketing their product. They have convinced people they are green, because of the Prius, but they have plenty of cars that get lower gas mileage than their American competitors when comparing same class cars. But, they really have been fantastic at reliability over the years. Most Japanese cars have been way better than American cars. I have owned 1 Honda, 1 Acura, 2 Porsche’s, 1 Dodge, 2 Chevy, 1 Nissan, 1 Audi, 1 Saab, and 2 Mazdas all bought new. Also, a Nissan, Honda and Porsche used. I have never had a problem with my Japanese cars that were bought new, nothing. The used ones by year 10 started to break down. One of our American cars had no problems. Every other car had something go wrong. Not necessarily a major engine problem, but something that had to be fixed. There is no getting around that the Japanese cared more about giving a quality product for many years.
I briefly knew someone who had worked for a Japanese company and she said the pressure on the employees to give perfect service was unbelievable (it was a service business, can’t remember what). She did not like the pressure, but there was no getting around that the Japanese do care about reputation and doing things right.
The CEO of Toyota was on Larry King and he took full responsibilty. He said his engineers are not able to replicate what is going wrong, although they have developed a fail safe system in the event something does go wrong, that is what the recall is, and he admitted that growing the company quickly may have caused HR mistakes. He also agreed with Larry that focus on profits may have taken their eye off of what should have been most important. Lastly, he regretted not having listened to the customer when issues first started coming up. I don’t think an American CEO would have said all of that.