Does this remind anyone else of the claims of unintended acceleration with the Audi 5000 in the ’80s?
CLICK: Sudden Acceleration in Toyota Cars Causes Owners to Rebel After Accidents – ABC News.
Hopefully this won’t shrink Toyota’s business as much as the bad press for Audi ruined their US sales. It took over ten years for Audi to recover from that notorious 60 Minutes piece. Prior, the Audi 5000 was the fastest selling European sedan in the US. The model name “5000″ was so brutally tarnished that Audi had to rename and rebrand the car the “100″ in 1989 in an effort to further remove itself from the scandalous Don Hewitt-approved story on 60 Minutes.
It ends up that the complaining Audi owners were ultimately just poorly skilled drivers who were new to the brand and didn’t realize that the German automaker put the gas pedal and brake pedal closer together than domestic brands of the time.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) concluded that the majority of unintended acceleration cases, including all that prompted the 60 Minutes report, were caused by driver error (i.e., confusion of pedals). CBS issued a partial retraction.
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