Miss Piggy Lunchbox

This story is slightly outdated now that Toyota has announced (with very few details) their plans to repair (not replace) their crappy accelerators causing deaths nationwide and now that the probe expands, deepens, and finally it seems like somebody is paying attention to the baby killing machines that Toyota produces.  This aspect of it is still relevant, though, and angers me to no end.

Toyota is sending new gas pedal systems to its factories rather than its dealership service departments, The Associated Press learned Friday. The move angered some dealers who say they should get the parts to take care of the millions of car owners whose accelerators may stick.

Dealers?  Good god, what about the customers?  The fact that Toyota sent this to their factories, so they could sell new cars, before fixing all the death traps they’ve got on the road is one of the most unforgivable things I can imagine.  They’ve got “precision cut steel reinforcement bars” on the way to dealers now, but I don’t find that phrase, nor its other name, “shim”, nor the fact that it will take a significant amount of time to train their servicepeople to do the repair, comforting at all.  This is almost certainly the last Toyota I’ll ever buy.

Can somebody please string these assholes up by their sphincters?  Are we really going to let them hide behind their lawyers as their dawdling costs lives, money, and lost productivity as many parents are now, quite reasonably, not putting their kids in these car-to-coffin transformers?

After a test drive of a Corolla and a Prius, which costs about $8k more than a Corolla.

Me: So what’s the financing again on a Prius?
Sales guy: Pfft. If you’re all about the financing, then you want a Corolla [at 0.0% APR]. But come on…what car did you like best? It’s too much money to settle for your second choice.
My Baby: We would like a new salesperson, please.

First, a conversation with the sales guys:

Sales Guy 1: You don’t want a Civic. It’s more expensive, plus your insurance will go up: Civics are the most stolen car in the country.
Me: What’s number two on that list?
Sales Guy 1: I’m not sure, but there’s not a Toyota in the top 10.

Later, after much hand-shaking, a conversation with the finance manager:

Finance Manager: Here’s the cost breakdown
Me: What’s this $200 window etching thing? Nobody mentioned that before.
Finance Manager: Oh, that was in the monthly payment I just quoted you.
Me: Yeah, but it wasn’t in the base price and that’s all anybody talked about until now.
Finance Manager: Nobody told you about this? This is great. This is us etching the VIN into the glass so thieves can’t file it off. You want this because Toyotas are the most stolen car in the country.  We put this on because cars kept getting stolen off of our lot.
My Baby: Great…and you passed the cost on to us.

So, when you want me to buy your car, nobody steals it.  When you want me to pay for the security thing you put on to protect your inventory, then thieves are everywhere stealing these things.

(It makes for a worse blog post, but they did take off the cost of the window etching after I complained.)

Update: According to Insurance Journal and IntelliChoice, the National Crime Insurance Bureau’s list of top 10 stolen cars in 2008 is:

1. 1995 Honda Civic
2. 1991 Honda Accord
3. 1989 Toyota Camry
4. 1997 Ford F-150 Series Pickup
5. 1994 Chevrolet C/K 1500 Pickup
6. 1994 Acura Integra
7. 2004 Dodge Ram Pickup
8. 1994 Nissan Sentra
9. 1988 Toyota Pickup
10. 2007 Toyota Corolla

I’d be pissed if I didn’t expect that everything a car salesperson says is a lie.  Of course, nothing stated was really a lie…but I’d surmise a misprepresentation of what was known.  My point was I’d be pissed if I’d based my purchase decision on it.