Toyota Hearings
Toyota Hearings – Toyota dealers from across the nation are in the nation’s capital today urging Congress to be fair as it begins to look into issues of sudden acceleration in some of the Japanese car maker’s vehicles, saying their livelihoods depend on it.
One, however, questioned whether the federal government can be impartial in deciding Toyota’s case, given that it put up huge stakes in Chrysler and General Motors — competitors of Toyota’s — to save them from dissolution.
“I think it puts our senators and our representatives in a very difficult position,” said Paul Atkinson, a Toyota dealer from Bryan, Texas, and chairman of the automaker’s National Dealer Advisory Council.
As proof, he noted that when the successful cash-for-clunkers program was first proposed – with financial incentives to turn in older-model cars for new ones that get better mileage – it was specifically designed to help Detroit’s automakers. Congress made it more broadly available before passing it last year, but it still caused Atkinson concern.
“I woke up one day and I realized my government was in competition with me,” he said.
“We’ve got to get government out of our business,” Atkinson added.
Other auto dealers — including Mike Jackson, chairman and chief executive office of AutoNation, the largest automotive retailer in the U.S. — downplayed any notion that federal backing for Chrysler and GM would play a role in how the Toyota hearings starting today would play out. His bigger concern was that sometimes in Washington political considerations drive investigators to overreach.
Toyota Hearings
Tags: Advisory Council, Auto Dealers, Automaker, Automakers, Autonation, Better Mileage, Bryan Texas, Car Maker, Chief Executive Office, Dissolution, Financial Incentives, General Motors, Japanese Car, Livelihoods, Model Cars, Paul Atkinson, Political Considerations, Sudden Acceleration, Toyota Dealer, Toyota Dealers
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