Few news stories have been bigger in recent weeks than those about Toyota's product recalls. But one has to wonder whether the treatment has been unfair.
No global automaker has been immune from large-scale product recalls in recent years. Ford Motor Co., one of the industry's hottest companies at the moment, was faced with record recalls last year, while Honda and other automakers are dealing right now with recalls of their own.
Certainly Toyota is suffering from heightened scrutiny because of the potential severity of one problem with some cars - throttle controls that could get stuck in acceleration mode. Also, questions about the company's response time to the problem have helped push the story to the forefront.
Still, logic says there must be something more, since Toyota - the Japanese company that became the world's largest automaker through robust growth in America in the past decade - continues to make many very good cars and trucks that offer consumers value in most every class.
The hunch from someone who closely has followed the automotive industry and corporate management over the past decade is that the Toyota story keeps on going in part because the company's top leadership has lagged on the communication front.
Sure, company President Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota's founder, has appeared at three news conferences in Japan in the past three weeks, but he has been absent in the United States, the company's largest and most important market.
With congressional hearings scheduled in Washington, D.C., next week, Mr. Toyoda said Wednesday he has no firm plans to attend. Since the company began recalling 8.5 million vehicles for quality and safety flaws, he has not made a single appearance in the U.S. - not at the company's signature North American plant in Georgetown, Ky., not in Washington.
Anybody who has dealt with or observed a corporate crisis understands that overcommunication from the top is the most effective policy. Yet many longtime and loyal Toyota dealerships in the U.S. have been left to serve as the face of the company's problems. Mr. Toyoda's conspicuous absence has thrust them into the difficult position of having to bear the brunt of American communication for problems they had nothing to do with.
So if Toyota expects to let its products speak more loudly than the recalls in the news, the company's leader needs to get on the ground in the U.S. and start communicating.
E-mail David Magee at dmagee@timesfreepress.com.