Driving Sports

It's not a good week to be Toyota.

Every day, the news wire rattles and hums with stories of every ambulance-chasing attorney from sea to shining sea jumping on board to sue the world's largest automaker for every fender-bender in the last 10 years.  As if that wasn't enough, Toyota now has customers suing because the company's current woes are hurting resale values of their cars. (Look out, HUMMER!)

Of course, when there's blood in the water you can expect the sharks to arrive, and the Great Whites up on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. got into the act as well, grilling the hapless James Lentz (President of Toyota Motor Sales USA) for crimes committed against the suburban motorist. They even hauled in Akio Toyoda, third generation family President of the company, to show the American Voter how virtuous and committed to safety their congressmen are.  The outrage was on display in Washington, except for the Congressmen from districts where Toyota has factories – they still like the company.

In the face of all this, and a 16% drop in January sales which is going to get worse when February numbers come out, Toyota's talking about idling production at some factories, as both GM and Chrysler did last year during the winter of their own discontent.  So the California Treasurer Bill Lockyer (whose job it is to keep tax money flowing) has convened a panel of celebrities, including actor Danny Glover and the President of the Sierra Club, to look into the matter and determine if Toyota really needs to shut down the huge NUMMI plant in Fremont, California. There's no doubt what they're going to say, but they'll go through the motions and issue some sanctimonious press releases along the way.

All kidding aside, some economic experts have projected that Toyota's impending NUMMI shutdown could cost the state - already one of the hardest-hit by unemployment during this recession - as many as 50,000 more jobs. That figure includes the more than 5,000 now employed at the plant itself and an estimated 50,000 more in related industries up and down the state. In anticipation of the closure, some companies that supply the plant with parts and material have already announced layoff plans.

That's a big deal, and it's a huge hit for a state that is already on the ropes economically.  Still, you have to wonder what real purpose a blue-ribbon panel of ministers, actors, and others is going to serve? The answer is obvious – if the NUMMI plant was making cars that could be sold, Toyota would have it running 7x24. If no one's going to buy the cars, they shut the place down.

It's amazing that car companies get hammered for making elementary business decisions while financial companies go on abusing the country under the benevolent and approving eyes of both parties in Congress and the Obama administration.  If Toyota was a bank instead of an automaker, the company would pay multi-billion-dollar bonuses to Lentz and Toyoda and President Obama would say they earned it.

The best thing for American jobs at Toyota plants is for Toyota to get through its technical and legal problems as quickly and calmly as possible, through the established means for coping with recalls and lawsuits. Danny Glover is a nice enough guy, but in this case, politicians and actors have nothing to offer that's helpful to anyone but themselves.