Toyota Goes on the Offensive

Sick and tired of being threatened with lawsuits from all over and getting hammered with internal memos and email leaked God knows through what means to the press, Japanese carmaker Toyota is making a stand and says it will defend itself, aggressively if needed, against lawsuits and unfounded speculation.

So far, some 97 suits are to be filed against the carmaker, threatening to add some good millions of dollars to the already announced fine of $16.4 million. Additionally, an extra 138 class action suits are pending courts across the US.

According to senior vice president Don Esmond, speaking for just-auto.com, Toyota will not sit back and take the hits. Instead, the carmaker will use science to show where the truth lies.

"We're going to be defending ourselves," Esmond said. "I would think the best way to do that is with science. At the end of the day if there's something wrong with the electronics, we want to know too. But we thoroughly believe there isn't."

Toyota's new found confidence is based on the sales figures for March, which showed an incredible (given the current public image of Toyota) 41 percent increase compared to the same month of 2009.

"No one has ever proven that we have any ghosts in our acceleration," said Esmond. "They've deep-dived it, they've looked at it, they've said that they can't find anything, we've asked them to go even deeper and we will make that data available to anybody."