Toyota President and CEO Akio Toyoda apologizes for ongoing safety problems, but refuses to meet with U.S. representatives.

During his third news conference in barely two weeks, Toyota President and CEO Akio Toyoda announced today that he will not appear before a U.S. Congressional hearing, later this month, as he’d been requested to do.

Instead, the top man at the world’s largest automaker will send one of his subordinates.

“We are sending the best people,” including Yoshi Inaba, head of Toyota’s U.S. operations, claimed Toyoda, who happens to be the grandson of the founder of the world’s largest automaker. They “will amply answer the questions” Congress poses he asserted.

Is Toyoda risking violating the vision of his grandfather, one that made Toyota an industrial giant and a global force to be reckoned with, and one that humbled the Detroit Three using their own techniques?

Perhaps, and simply providing answers is not what either Toyota – or Toyoda – must do right now. The executive’s imperial decision to pass on Washington’s invitation is as wrong-headed as anything we could imagine the automaker doing  in the current environment.

And that’s on top of a running series of breathtaking mistakes that has already tarnished the company’s  image and that of its senior management team.

The irony of all this  is that Akio Toyoda took on his current post, barely a year ago, under the cloak of being a “reformer.”

In what then seemed an unusually candid admission, he warned that Toyota was making some major mistakes that threatened its long-term viability. Oh how true that statement rings and rings now…

Did Toyoda, at that time, have a premonition of what was to come, or was he simply looking at broader issues of profitability, product development, engineering,  manufacturing efficiency, overall competitiveness, to say nothing of declining quality?

If, in his mind, Toyota was in trouble at the beginning of 2009, just months after attaining its goal of becoming the world’s largest automaker, what shape is it in now?

Perhaps, if you have traveled in the Orient, you have observed the hiss-ssss  of “teeth-sucking” when such a difficult question is posed – sssssssssssss

Akio Toyoda is in our view a reluctant leader.   

He was virtually invisible, until recently, as quality problems began to incite what ultimately became the  media feeding frenzy now in full view —  with 37 deaths — and still counting —  that allegedly are attributed to Toyota safety defects that the company denied before being forced to recall millions of vehicles by he National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Toyoda then clung to appearances in front of the notoriously complacent Japanese media, which denied the customers and media  in Toyota’s most important and historically most profitable market access to the man running the show.

Never mind, for the moment, that since Toyota stock is traded via ADRs in the U.S., that restricted access Japanese press conferences  potentially violates regulation FD of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

As the NHTSA investigation launched yesterday into the violation of yet another U.S. law requiring a five-day notification and the immediate recall of defective vehicles proves, Toyota is apparently used to operating above the law of the gaijins – let alone appearing in front of U.S. government panels to explain corporate  actions that are — at best questionable — and potentially illegal.

Toyoda didn’t offer any apologies after the first recall for “unintended acceleration” was announced, in October 2009.  And he initially remained behind the scenes when, on January 21, 2010, the second recall, this one for “sticky accelerators,” was revealed.

The first the world heard from the Toyota heir was when a Japanese TV crew ambushed Toyoda leaving the annual Davos conference – which brings together global business and political fatcats – ironically, as the executive climbed into an Audi.

He took another week to resurface, this time on his own terms, during a traditionally Japanese-style news conference, bowing and issuing his apologies to worried Toyota owners.  Then, days later, Toyoda held a second news conference, this one triggered by the company’s reluctant admission of problems with the brakes on the popular 2010 Prius hybrid – a problem first reported on TheDetroitBureau.com six weeks earlier by Ken Zino, and one Toyota vehemently denied at the time all the while working on a fix.

Curiously, Toyoda’s second news conference was, he said, meant to assure Prius owners they were being looked out for, yet it wasn’t until the following week that Toyota announced the Prius brake recall on only 2010 models.   And the company, still in denial, has yet to address reported problems with earlier versions of the hybrid.

It’s true the  humbled giant has recently been shifting tone, trying to stay ahead of steadily escalating reports of quality problems by agreeing to launch committees, investigations, and even order recalls on products it previously defended.

Meanwhile, it has spent countless millions buying TV and newspaper ads, here and abroad, to declare, “mea culpa,” and promise to get to the bottom of the now numerous quality and safety issues.  As Bob Carter, head of the Toyota division in the U.S., has said, safety is a “cornerstone” of the company.  If consumers question that assumption, not only Toyota’s reputation, but its steadily growing sales and market share could collapse.

There are others who could better address the details of the many  questions that Congress will raise during the hearings later this month.  Indeed, Toyoda would be a tempting target for political grandstanding by a Congress that has in our view proven itself better at pompous positioning than actual governing.

Nonetheless, the scandal that has enveloped Toyota is now so broad and severe that turning things over to a subordinate, even one as senior as Yoshi Inaba, appears little more than a face-saving dodge.

We’re not sure if there’s a direct translation of Harry Truman’s favorite line, “The Buck Stops Here,” but Ken Zino humbly offers this one – kōatsu koko de ‘teishi. Nonetheless, in this case, billions of yen rest on what will happen on Capitol Hill, later this month, and Akio Toyoda should be sitting front-and-center when the gavel comes down.

By skipping the session, the grandson not only threatens the legacy that was built around his family’s creation.  He is risking the future of Toyota Motor Company.

– – Paul Eisenstein & Ken Zino, TheDetroitBureau.com & World Auto Report