Give Me a Brake, Car Companies.
Just as the previous blog entry discussed BMW’s manufacturing system becoming similar to the Toyota model, it seems that BMW has also decided to imitate Toyota in the art of developing faulty brake engines.
A few months ago, Toyota was forced to issue a massive recall of up to 437,000 of their cars. All across the globe, many people found themselves unable to slow down their rapidly accelerating Toyota Prius, resulting in many car accidents, and even the unfortunate deaths of some families.
To say the least, this had certainly caused a large dent in Toyota’s reputation of safety and reliability.
Today, BMW has recalled up to 350,000 of their luxury cars throughout the world. Yet it seems that BMW’s reputation was not damaged as badly as Toyota had been. This could be due to the fact that, thankfully, there has been no reported accidents or injuries due to the faulty power braking system. In fact, a further look into the braking problems reveals that the cars were still basically safe. Rather than losing the brakes altogether, BMW’s cars would experience a very slight reduction in braking due to a possible leak which potentially caused a vacuum loss, essentially just making the brake pedal harder to press.
It is also interesting to note that their recall is completely voluntary. Mr. Robertson, a member of BMW’s board of management for sales and marketing, claimed, “I think we’re behaving in a way that people would expect of a premium brand.” It looks like BMW might have actually managed flipping around their accident into yet another halo effect for the company; it will be interesting to see how consumers react to a company voluntarily admitting that they made a slight mistake.