subject: Waukegan Used Cars Like The Toyota Prius Getting Unfair Reputation [print this page] Its a media mess! More grief for Toyota and some possibly seedy research by a professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. What it all boils down to is Toyota models like Prius getting a bad rap for problems that have not been definitely identified. Dealers of Waukegan used cars agree that the media has helped hurt Toyotas reputation.
ABC News ran a story about David Gilbert, an SIU-C professor, who claimed he had induced acceleration in a Toyota model without causing an error code that would lead mechanics to later find the problem. He wanted to prove that it was possible, in theory, for Toyotas to accelerate unintentionally and for the problem not to register.
After many issues with the ABC News story, Toyotas lawyers asked President David Westin to issue a retraction and an apology for the story covered by Brian Ross. Customers of used cars Kenosha will probably not want to wade through the entire mess, so Ill summarize.
(Sidebar: As a graduate of SIUC with a degree in journalism and a former employee of the campus paper the Daily Egyptian, I had to check out how the paper had handled this story. I was not disappointed. The DE stuck to its long tradition of fair reporting and kept up with the story regardless of how it might reflect on the university or its staff. Im glad to see that at least one bastion of excellence and accuracy in journalism remains intact.)
Toyota claimed the story had many problems, like the fact that Ross edited in a tachometer gone wild into footage of his death ride in the Toyota. Oh, did I mention Gilbert actually had to rewire the Toyota in order to get it to accelerate on its own and not leave an error code. Isnt that what we call manufactured evidence?
The real kicker is that Gilbert has been a highly-paid consultant ($150 an hour) for lawyers who were suing Toyota. That wasnt mentioned in the ABC report. So much for fair and accurate journalism. Didnt NBC have a similar issue with biased reporting? Yes, it was 1992 when Michelle Gillen covered a story about exploding gas tanks on GM trucks. (Of course, those were the days where General Motors was the bad guy following the documentary Roger and Me about GMs CEO by liberal activist Michael Moore.) It was later revealed that that Dateline NBC rigged the tank to explode for bigger effect in the investigative footage. And that the expert who was the main source for the story had also been a paid witness for plaintiffs against GM. Sound familiar?
So perhaps this isnt really about Toyotas vehicle quality, which customers seem to think is still just fine. Maybe its more about who we can pick on at the moment and who is disliked the most by the liberal media. After all, we cant be too mean to GM or Chrysler, no matter how many recalls they have, until they pay back their billions to the government. Dealers of used cars Kenosha have a much better deal for their customers than the government can offer.
So, watch the story for yourself. Read the letters back and forth from Toyota to ABC. What is comes down to is this: Do you believe everything you read or do you believe in what you drive? Waukegan used Toyota drivers know the proof is in the Prius, not in the paper.
