To ctviggen, Toyota wern't hiding anything. They didn't find anything wrong with the vehicles so they couldn't recall them.
Of the 400 complaints, most were just a sudden acceleration that stopped immediately the driver pressed the brake instead of the accelerator. A few resulted in accidents and the drivers were trying to claim it was the vehicles fault, presumably for the insurance. The press started a witch hunt simply because it was a new type of vehicle and people were gullible enough to believe it might have problems.
Those of us with a few years on us will remember the Audi 5000 sudden acceleration mess in the late '80s. The Audi pedals were slightly offset and a few people mistook the gas and brake pedals. When they floored the gas, thinking it was the brake, panic insued and a number of accidents happened. Drivers claimed the car was accelerating at top speed, throttle wide open, in spite of them pushing the brakes as hard as they could. Then the lawyers came out of the wood work. The automotive press (the enthusiast press anyway) weighed in to testify that there was no way that particular car could over run it's brakes and it had to be driver error. Then the Feds got involved and the U.S. Department of Transportation drew the same conclusion. You'd think that would settle the matter but it didn't. Audi, somewhat like Toyota, handled the PR very badly at first and the main stream media decided, in spite of the clear evidence of driver error, to crucify Audi. The 5000, an excellent car, was taken off the market and Audi themselves abandoned the U.S. market for a number of years. This created a lot of economic hardship but the media remain smug and self righteous over the whole thing. The most influential outlet was CBS's Sixty Minutes which did a hatchet job making Audi look like a horribly guilty bunch of villains in spite of the facts to the contrary. Virtually anyone who knew anything about cars knew immediately that CBS was blowing smoke. Nonetheless, they have never recanted and years later Morley Safer, a car guy himself, would only submit to an interview with a major car mag if they agreed not to bring up the subject.
Personally, although I didn't own an Audi, I protested the most effective way I could. I quit watching Sixty Minutes all together and, to this day, I leave the room when it comes on. They have zero credibility in my book and I will not patronize their advertisers if I can avoid them.
