Toyota Chief Compares His Cars to Limp Bean Curd
I’m not sure this was such a good analogy for Akio Toyoda to use while on his apology tour to Beijing:
CCTV reporter Rui Chenggang asked him during the one-on-one, “There is a saying the best cars made by Japanese companies are sold in Japan, the second-rate ones are sold to the U.S. and Europe, and the cars that are in an even lower tier are exported to China. Of course this saying may be unfounded, but can you guarantee that Chinese consumers will receive completely the same service during the recall process?”
Reiterating the response he gave during the briefing, Toyoda tried a gustatory appeal with a reference to a well-known spicy bean curd dish.
“Mapo tofu in China, Japan and the U.S. is still called mapo tofu, though the taste is somewhat different,” he said. “To compare cars to food is probably not the best example, but we hope everyone can understand that when we make cars, we factor in regional differences in road conditions, consumer habits and usage criteria.” (WSJ)
Note to Toyoda: the next time someone asks you this question, you first say that it isn’t true. Second, you reiterate that all Toyotas are built to the same high quality standards. Third, at a time when consumers are worried about your cars going out of control and crashing, you should not use an example that compares said cars to limp bean curds with the consistency of weak Jell-O.
Now I’m hungry, and the leftover mapo doufu in my frig is calling to me.
Well, everyone is entitled to a brain fart every now and then… ha ha.
Especially how after so many people in the US have been piling on Toyoda’s woes.
what a nice way of saying “get f*cked”. I feel all warm and fuzzy, not to mention hungry. I’ll now be humbly understanding next week when I take my crap Japanese car into the crap Japanese workshop to receive its crap service (not to mention over-priced), knowing that if I had wanted to get a good car and good service, I should not have ordered Bean Curd. Good thing the image and popularity of the Japanese in China is still intact….
Yeah, and this story’s not over yet. If I have time today/tomorrow, I’ll post a little nugget about why people are pissed off that compensation to Americans is better than to Chinese citizens. Bad, bad PR.
I’ve seen some bean curd that looked [and smelled] like it could have fatal consequences to the incautious.
You don’t want to go there. I don’t want to cause any ‘accidents’ to incautious and sensitive readers.
So how would you compare Toyota’s performance to that of any other foreign CEO testifying before Congress. I can think of some entities that would have just sent a box of stinnky tofu instead.
Yeah, good point. I can think of some notable performances in the past two years that could be favorably compared to something a lot stinkier than tofu, too. (Although there is something called stinky tofu, which is really rank — that’s for another day perhaps).