Toyota covering its bumper

Opinion: March 2, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Toyota has been running apologetic TV ads and vowing to win back customers’ trust. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the company is busy doing damage control.

Toyota has hired two crisis management/lobbying firms to join a mini-battalion of 32 lobbyists Toyota already has working on Capitol Hill. The beefed-up public-relations and lobbying effort will help buttress Toyota’s sizable political-campaign and charitable giving.

More than 40 percent of the 125 members of Congress on the three committees investigating Toyota have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations over the last 10 years from a network of sources tied to the carmaker, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.

Many of the donations are targeted to key lawmakers on committees and states that intersect with Toyota’s operations.

Charities

In the last two years, Toyota gave $1 million to charities and nonprofits with ties to Congress, according to the Post.

While Toyota was spreading the largesse, company officials boasted of saving more than $100 million on recall and safety efforts by the government, internal documents show. The documents reviewed by the Associated Press list savings achieved by putting off safety regulations, avoiding investigations of defects, and slowing industry mandates.

Toyota’s reputation for quality has taken a severe beating largely due to reports of a sudden-acceleration problem in several models. The problem first surfaced several years ago and is being blamed for a number of crashes involving injuries and deaths.

Last month, Toyota was forced to recall millions of cars and shut down auto plants in an effort to fix the problem.