I disagree with the staff at Automotive News and their selection of the Toyota recall story as the top automobile-related news story of 2010. The story that deserves at least as much attention has to do with how members of the state-run media ignored recall issues at GM (a.k.a., “Government Motors”) at Toyota’s expense.

I covered the Toyota recall story thoroughly in three early-February posts:

• In my first post Feb. 5, I examined the number of campaign contributions made by Toyota executives to Barack Obama since Jan. 1, 2007, and found that only two of 151 executives listed on the Toyota web site gave a combined total of $2,500 to Obama for America;

• In my second post Feb. 5, I speculated about the possible reasons why the Obama Administration would want to bully Toyota; and, finally,

• In a Feb. 8 post, I wondered why the federal government had not yet issued a recall for the Chevrolet Cobalt despite the fact that, according to a Feb. 2 Los Angeles Times report, 905,000 2005-’09 copies of the “Bow-Tie” vehicle, including the Cobalt SS, were the subject of a new investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration due to complaints of electric power steering failure.

It was in the latter post that I revealed the disturbing results of some simple math calculations.

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The lengths that the media will go to when they find a story that they love. A guy on a San Diego freeway has an out-of-control Toyota Prius with a stuck gas pedal and lives are in danger, and the world is about to end! Cue the live choppers, the news crews and call the networks. They all fell faster than their own stock prices for this ruse. Why? Because they wanted the story to be true.

This James Sikes guy was not hard to figure out from the start. When I heard he called 911 while supposedly driving 90 mph down the freeway, I knew this was a fraud. Who does that? Seriously. Your car is out of control and instead of putting it in neutral or shutting it off, you call 911? Of course, it’s taken the media a week or so to finally figure out what most of us saw from the start, but what else is new? They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again and they’ll do it with many more important stories than this one. (more…)

In spite of shrinking resources, market share, and credibility, the venerable Gray Lady has poured resources into trashing Toyota, the chief competitor of the paper’s drinking buddies — the White House and the UAW.

Look at the depth of their investigations, which, by  the way, far exceed the number of documents or years the New York Times reviewed while “vetting” candidate Obama:

Of the 12,700 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration consumer complaints analyzed by The Times, the Ford Motor Company had the most, about 3,500.

Toyota ranked second, with about 3,000 complaints, but those were linked to far more accidents — 1,000 — compared to 450 crashes for Ford.

Odd.  Taking the time to trash Ford while they’re at it?  How comprehensive of them. More: (more…)

It has been fascinating to observe how a multinational corporation that is so popular and trusted can be so flatfooted and incapable of responding to a crisis.

Like many of these crises it started small. The corporation seemed invincible and underwent major growth. Some worried the growth was too fast and retained doubts about the science and the technology. However, these warnings were on the fringe and were easily ignored…

… until three months ago, when the corporation suddenly found itself at the center of crisis after crisis, its science and technology revealed to be hopelessly flawed, shoddy even.

Inside the corporation denial took over, but eventually it became clear the problem was structural.  In a rush for profits and market dominance, executives had ignored procedures, falsified data, and then covered up or tried to minimize their falsifications.

Compounding the problem — the head of the corporation remained silent until he was forced to respond to the concerns of the American people: (more…)

There’s a question oft-posed by the proponents of global warming… or of “climate change,” as the new term of art has it, thus allowing warmists to claim both the snowstorm now blanketing America’s East Coast, as well as the melting of that snow, as evidence for their theory.

“To what end?” the warmists ask the skeptics.  Or, in the lingua franca of conspiracy theorists everywhere: “Cui bono, my friend, cui bono?”

Well, lots of people are benefiting from the practical implications of this theory. There’s Nobel Laureate Al Gore for one, who is on track to become the first green billionaire:

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Lemmings that they are, the MSM are marching in lockstep concerning the braking problems with the Toyota Prius. Have they looked any further?  Have they considered the possibility that some Prius models have an airbag deployment problem?  Probably not – that would involve journalistic digging.

Here’s a 2004 Prius that was involved in an accident in February 2009. (My neighbor was the driver.)

The driver suffered a broken sternum and heavy bruising from the seat belt. The car was declared a total wreck.  Here’s a photo displaying the operation of the airbags: (more…)