BREAKING: FBI Raids Toyota Suppliers

WXYZ ^ | 02/24/10 | Editors

[Kieri]

(WXYZ) - The FBI is confirming raids at the offices of three Michigan auto suppliers who do work for Toyota.

Search warrants were served Tuesday evening at Yazaki North America, DENSO International and Tokai Rika. Yazaki sells electronic components and DENSO makes accelerator pedals.

Denso has released the following statement about the situation "DENSO International America, Inc. (DIAM), U.S. subsidiary of DENSO Corporation, was inspected on February 23, 2010 by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice in regard to U.S. antitrust laws. DIAM is cooperating with this investigation."

Stay with Action News and WXYZ.com for the latest on this breaking news.

[clintonh8r]

All UAW shops, I hope..

[chooseascreennamepat]

The raids will continue until UAW is installed!

[xkaydet65]

Tom Clancy created a scenario quite similar to this in one of his techno thrillers (can't recall the name) A Japanese car with a defect similar to Toyota's crashes and kills a family. Protectionist American congressmaen pass laws forcing individual safety inspections for all cars entering US from Japan. This creates a staggering backlog costing Japan INC billions. Right wingers in Japanese govt, working with India launch a limited war against US. Geographic goal is the Mariana Islands. Knowing the US is streched by committments in Middle east and that we'd never use nukes on Japan the Japanese are confident. They also launch a cyber attack on Wall Street. Of course Jack Ryan saves all.

Interesting scenario, and would it surprise anyone if Obama slapped similar one by one inspections of autos and/or parts before allowing them in country?

[gidget7]

Amazing isn’t it?? And if this is how he treats our allies...........who just happen to hold the largest portion of our debt........we aren’t going to have any friends left, cuz our enemies aren’t coming around to his apologies and bowing either.

[444Flyer]

I smell a Union Rat.

[MountainYankee]

Unfortunately, I lost confidence in US made motor vehicles long ago. I have owned nothing but Nissan, Honda, and Toyota trucks and cars for the past 20 years because they make the best. They are also AMERICAN made. The primary problem is that they are not UAW made. This is fascism, stark, and bare faced. I would ride a horse before I would buy a GM car now I am so PO'd.

[celtic gal]

I guess if I were the CEO of Toyota I would close my US plants and go back to Japan..Americans, like me who love their Toyotas will not be happy having to pay more for a Toyota but...why should this company put up with this behaviour from the US congress...disgusting
And what about all these American cars that were sooooooooo good we all went for the Japanese cars! HUMMMMMMMMMMMMM If the American cars were so “sierra hotel” then why did so many of us switch to the foreign cars? Could it be the history of reliablity ?
My first Toyota was a Toyota Public, a 1968 two cylinder air cooled engine that started when it rained and made it up the hills of Okinawa which in the 1970s was a requirement. Been a Toyota fan ever since!

[Road Warrior ‘04]

I said it right from the start- Obama did not have to nationalize the auto industry- only one. then use the power of the government to drive the others out of business

Yep! Honda, Nissan, Kia and whoever best be watching out!

[denydenydeny]

What's interesting is that nobody wants to acknowledge that this is likely a union shop producing parts for several automakers. After all, this shop was probably in operation long before they started making parts for Toyota.

My thought also. In any case, the media will make sure that Toyota gets the full blame.

[DTogo]

New car designs and other sensitive R&D material will likely find it's way over to Government Motors, Chrysler, and the UAW.

日本＊ピング＊ (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[Dr. Marten]

Yeah, I’m sure it was just a coincidence that Denso happened to be one of Toyota’s largest suppliers. It couldn’t have anything to do with Government Motor’s interest in promoting GM.

[cripplecreek]

People often don’t understand that parts makers generally don’t make parts for just one manufacturer.

In the last factory I worked at, our bread and butter job was making inside door skins for Cadillacs. After that our second biggest job was making some kind of plastic grill for Ford trucks. We also made door skins for Jeep some kind of cover for Toyota seat belt latches and some kind of ash tray part. There were probably a dozen or more other jobs that went on in the shop that I wasn’t aware of. If they didn’t need to be painted, I never saw them.

[muawiyah]

Again, this is simply the Obamistas using state organs to stir up what they hope will be serious anti-Asian feelings in the American population.

The Democrats have always been big time when it comes to hating Asians.

[Pravious]

I hope every one of the 50% or so of the country that hasn’t been turned into a brain-dead Obamazombie buys a Toyota and their sales skyrocket, just to show our Thug-In-Chief that this kind of crap won’t work in OUR country.

[Gator113]

This is really getting out of hand.

[your local physicist]

What a bad joke this is. I have no doubt that almost all the accidents blamed on “sudden acceleration” were actually caused by driver error when drivers mistakenly stepped on the gas pedal when they intended to step on the brake. (The other very few accidents are probably caused by extremely rare defects in electronic components). The Audi 5000 was accused of the same problem back in the 80s and as far as I know Audi never found anything wrong with it and concluded that some drivers just didn’t know how to operate their vehicles. I would bet that Toyota knows that almost all of the accidents are caused by driver error but they’re following the long-run strategy that Audi took, which is not blaming drivers and letting the problem fade away over time. It would be a big mistake for Toyota to say what is the actual cause of almost all the crashes (driver error) because then Toyota would become the number 1 subject of late night jokes as Letterman and others joke about how Toyota blamed the drivers for its “defective cars.”

Over the long run, Toyota owners will continue to replace their vehicles with new Toyotas because they had a good experience as owners and Toyota will continue to prosper. I drove a Toyota for five years and had no problems with it, and I wouldn’t hesitate to jump into a Toyota and drive one right now. I doubt that this is a plot by GM or the UAW, but I would bet that the MSM is giving this more air time than it really deserves because Toyota factories are primarily located in Republican-controlled states.

[GVnana]

Did Government Motors put them up to this?

The government hates competition.

[muawiyah]

Knew a lady who had that happen to her in a parking garage. Took her across the width of the garage and into a concrete buttress. She survived but was hospitalized where they found she had what amounted to a fatal cancer.

So, why did her car do that? Well, she'd discovered some sort of shenanigan involving Express Mail contracts with Evergreen Airways. Don't believe she ever got a chance to show up for a couple of hearings on the matter.

This later turned into a whiz-bang scandal on its own so it didn't really help the crooks to try to kill her.

Now, regarding the stories about Toyotas with stuck accelerator peddles, they're probably all true, but I think you'd be better off investigating the manufacturers' personnel rosters to see if anybody there had a mob family connection.

[Josephat]

“Obama is Stalin without the murders.”

YET

[your local physicist]

I know...what a circus this was today with all these moronic congressmen bashing Toyota for problems that any good researcher can figure out were almost all caused by driver errors. All car companies get sued repeatedly for accidents that are almost entirely caused by driver error. The Firestone tire recall also was overplayed in the media. Although some tires were defective, the tires didn’t cause the accidents directly. It was bad driving and overreaction to a tire failure that caused SUVs to roll over. I had a tire blow out on me once while driving a big Ford Bronco XLT, and the tire failure did not cause any loss of steering control. I just pulled over into the left shoulder and took my sweet time waiting for the highway to clear out for a full half mile before I jogged across the highway. People are just screwing up in their Toyotas and stepping on the gas instead of the brake, and I would bet that many of these people are drinking, tired out from lack of sleep, or stoned on some kind of prescription drug.