Toyota Motor Corp. officials bragged in late 2007 that they saved more than $100 million by deterring U.S. safety officials from ordering costly repairs to prevent runaway vehicles, e-mails obtained by The Detroit News show.
The communications suggest some executives knew of the situation nearly two years earlier than was acknowledged in a July 2009 internal company document that surfaced this year.
In that presentation, Toyota officials touted the $100 million they saved by agreeing in 2007 to recall just 55,000 floor mats that could have interfered with the gas pedal.
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The revelation created a firestorm of outrage on Capitol Hill in the wake of Toyota's recalls of more than 6 million vehicles in the United States, mainly for problems tied to sudden acceleration. During a February Congressional hearing about the recalls, Toyota officials disavowed the 2009 document.
In addition to the financial savings, the newly released e-mails indicate for the first time that senior Toyota executives were worried they'd be forced to take additional action.
Toyota, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the e-mails, which were included in a recent court filing.
The automaker already has been fined $16.4 million -- the maximum amount by law -- for its four-month delay in recalling 2.3 million vehicles for sticky accelerator pedals. Manufacturers are required to report flaws within five days of its discovery.
Transportation Department spokeswoman Olivia Alair said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency of that department, continues to investigate "whether Toyota violated the law leading up to its recent recalls.
"The agency has obtained and is reviewing more than 600,000 pages of documents from Toyota to determine what the automaker knew about the existence of safety defects and when," Alair said this week.
In the newly surfaced e-mails dated Sept. 14, 2007, Chris Tinto, Toyota's vice president for technical and regulatory safety, contacted Josephine Cooper, the automaker's vice president of public policy and government/industry affairs. NHTSA, Tinto wrote, "was beginning to look at vehicle design parameters as being a culprit, focusing on the accelerator pedal geometry coupled with the push button 'off' switch. We estimate that had the agency instead pushed hard for recall of the throttle assembly (for instance), we would be looking at upwards of $100M+ in unnecessary cost."
The following day, Cooper forwarded Tinto's e-mail to senior Toyota executives, including Jim Lentz, who is now president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, and Bob Carter, group vice president and general manager of Toyota Division.
"Thought you would be interested in the outcome -- and the avoidance of much bigger issues (and costs)," Cooper wrote, adding that the automaker's safety team did "a good job."
In March 2007, NHTSA opened a probe into the floor mat issue. Tinto told colleagues that Toyota couldn't head off the investigation. The automaker had offered to send letters to ES350 owners about the mats.
"NHTSA feels they have too many complaints on this one vehicle to drop the issue," Tinto wrote. "The results of a stuck throttle are 'catastrophic.'??"
Tinto also downplayed the floor mat recall, saying it was the product of talks with NHTSA.
"We will 'recall' the '07 ES and Camry floor mat, however we will NOT declare that a 'safety defect' exists," Tinto wrote. "Of course the owner letter will say that a defect WAS found in the mat, to ensure that owners pay attention to the notice and secure the mats correctly."
It wasn't until late 2009, after the deaths of four California motorists, that Toyota agreed to a more comprehensive and expensive fix than the floor mat recall.
Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide over the issue, and U.S. government investigators have received more than 3,000 complaints alleging 93 deaths since 2000.
Asked for comment this week about the recently surfaced e-mails, Toyota spokeswoman Martha Voss said: "Our core values have always been to put the customer first and to ensure the highest levels of safety and quality in our vehicles."
