Photo/Illutration Daihatsu president Soichiro Okudaira, right, apologizes during an April 28 news conference in Tokyo. (Kohei Kondo)

Product quality fraud scandals that embroiled Toyota Motor Corp. group companies in recent years have serious implications for the credibility of the Japanese manufacturing sector. The car manufacturing behemoth needs to ask itself some tough questions: Has its group governance veered off track? Is its management team overly complacent?

Daihatsu Motor Co., Toyota’s wholly owned subsidiary, admitted last week to irregularities in side-collision safety tests done for international regulatory approval applications for four models.

The “kei” light vehicle maker said the door trim on the affected vehicles was modified with a “notch” to improve the chances of passing the tests. The modification for testing was not part of the original designs of the vehicles, most of which were sold overseas under the Toyota brand.

The company said it would not recall the affected vehicles, pointing out that new in-house safety tests implemented after the wrongdoing came to light confirmed that the models fulfilled the standards. But the rigging of the tests still amounts to safety fraud, a vicious act that disregards the most important quality of cars. We urge the independent fact-finding committee set up by the company to conduct a detailed investigation to ascertain where the responsibility lays.

In March, Toyota Industries Corp., the century-old company from which Toyota Motor was born, admitted it had falsified results of emissions tests on gasoline and diesel engines of forklifts. During durability performance tests, actual measured values were replaced by estimated figures on occasion. In other cases, engine parts were changed during the test.

The transport ministry punished the company for fabricating the test results by retracting the “type designation,” or certification that the vehicle meets the safety and quality standards, for two models.

Last year, Hino Motors Ltd., which is a majority owned by Toyota Motor, was also found to have falsified gas mileage and emissions test results. Hino’s fraudulent practices were traced to the same section responsible for both development and testing, which hampered the self-checking function. The same problem was behind the Daihatsu test rigging as the same section that oversaw both development and testing.

These instances of noncompliance indicate the group is infected with widespread ethical lapses. In response to Daihatsu’s announcement about testing fraud, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda and President Koji Sato apologized in a webcast by the company’s own online media site. They said they considered the matter as one that involves the entire group and pledged to identify the causes and take steps to regain the trust of customers.

Their inevitable response to the revelations came way too late, however. When similar scandals struck Hino and Toyota Industries, the auto giant said these were problems the individual firms should deal with. But Toyota Motor should have tackled them from the standpoint of them being a challenge to group governance.

In 2021, it emerged that Toyota Motor’s sales arm and dealerships had falsified inspection results for hundreds of cars for the legally prescribed vehicle inspections.

Toyota faced a crisis in the aftermath of a massive recall in the United States in 2009 and 2010. Toyoda, who had just taken over the company’s presidency, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He stated, “We never run away from our problems or pretend we don’t notice them.”

Toyota is facing the challenge of clarifying what went wrong within the group during the 10 plus years since then and to root out all the factors that caused the wrongdoings. The challenge will test the leadership of Sato, who took over the company’s rudder this spring.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 6

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