Mistakes were made, but Toyota is working to fix safety problems and regain credibility, says Group Vice President Bob Carter.

Though the company hasn’t intentionally set out to cover up or otherwise hide problems with its vehicles, there’s no question Toyota has “made a couple mistakes,” Group Vice President Bob Carter acknowledged during an exclusive interview with TheDetroitBureau.com.

The automaker has been besieged since, last month in the mainstream media when  it announced a second recall for so-called “unintended acceleration” caused by potentially sticky accelerators.

The situation grew worse, just this week, with its decision to recall 440,000 Prius hybrids, worldwide, due to a braking problem first identified by editor Ken Zino of TheDetroitBureau.com back in December, and which Toyota initially denied.

(Prius owners with complaints should report them to the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or http://www.safercar.gov, and Toyota at 800-331-433. Have your VIN number in front of you when you call. )

Those and some other problems have raised concerns about Toyota’s products and policies, tarnishing a seemingly bullet-proof reputation that it honed over the 50 years since it first entered the American marketplace.

Carter, a Toyota veteran, admitted he spoke too soon, last October, following the first in a pair of recalls designed to prevent what some owners have described as runaway cars.

At the time, the head of the Toyota division in the U.S. market insisted that the problem was solely due to loose carpets that could “entrap” a vehicle’s accelerator. He  insisted that  talk of any other possible problem was “unwarranted speculation.”

But on January 21, Toyota announced plans to recall another 2.3 million vehicles to repair sticky accelerators. And the recall subsequently went global.

Saying he wishes both problems had been identified last autumn, Carter told TheDetroitBureau.com that, “I understand that it has affected some of my personal credibility.”

Not only is Carter’s credibility damaged, but Toyota in the U.S, and globally has bounced a check written to cover its customers’ expectations on the safety  and quality of their vehicles.

The problems with accelerator pedals, he insisted, are “very rare,” and Carter repeated past assertions that he and other Toyota officials have made that there are no further unintended acceleration issues, which some outsiders have tried to link to alleged problems with Toyota’s electronic vehicle control systems.

“We have absolutely full confidence in our electronic systems,” the executive asserted, adding that “they have been thoroughly tested.  We did everything but hit them with lightning bolts.”

During a separate appearance, on Wednesday morning, at the Chicago Auto Show, Carter pulled the wraps off the 2011 Toyota Avalon sedan.  He said the maker debated whether to unveil a new vehicle during the Chicago media preview but decided that product is what drives the industry.  Nonetheless, he spent much of his time on stage discussing the Toyota safety scandal and spent significant time afterwards answering reporters’ questions.

In his interview, later in the day, Carter said he realizes that much of what he says, right now, will be “seen as spin,” put repeatedly insisted the Japanese maker sees safety as quality as “cornerstones” of its business.

The Group Vice President, meanwhile, tried to explain the circumstances behind the Prius recall.  While TheDetroitBureau.com first reported on the problem on December 24, and Toyota denied knowledge of the issue, but the company was already developing a “fix” for what it then viewed as nothing more than a “customer satisfaction issue.”

Without doubt, in the face of Toyota denials, there remain questions about the  timing, especially with Toyota’s initial step of reprogramming Prius brakes on its assembly line in Japan, sometime in January.

The decision to order a recall was not announced until this past Tuesday, after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confronted the Japanese maker about its foot dragging on safety matters.

The evening before, this magazine published a follow-up report that revealed potential problems with the brakes on Prius hybrids sold before the 2010 model-year.  That report was based on an examination of U.S. government records reporting consumer complaints, as well as direct contact with Prius owners troubled by the behavior of their vehicles.

“That’s a head-scratcher,” said Carter, clearly troubled by the report.  He acknowledged that by the end of January, there were 104 complaints in the government files clearly describing brake behavior problems similar to the issues plaguing the 2010 Prius.  (TheDetroitBureau.com also found numerous complaints that referred to more ambiguous brake issues.)  But since word that a Prius recall was likely, the number of direct complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has increased dramatically, with at least 356 new reports.

(Prius owners with complaints should report them to the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or http://www.safercar.gov, and Toyota at 800-331-433. Have your VIN number in front of you when you call. )

So far, insisted Carter, “There’s nothing we can find.”

We have heard this before, as have Toyota owners.

Asked what sort of impact the company’s ongoing problems have – and could continue to have – on sales and market share, Carter cautioned, “It’s too early to quantify.”

The automaker has clearly lost tens of thousands of sales since it ordered a “stop-sale” on vehicles affected by the second recall.  Those models normally account for about 4,000 sales daily, or roughly 60% of Toyota’s U.S. volume.

On the plus side, the executive said sales of models not covered by the accelerator pedal recall held up pretty much as expected in January.

During his news conference, Wednesday morning, Carter noted that U.S. dealers now all have the necessary parts to make accelerator pedal repairs, and he said some are running 24-hour operations to make the project move as quickly as possible.

By Wednesday morning, 224,000 vehicles had been repaired, and “we are running at 50,000 vehicles a day being repaired.”  But considering the millions of Toyota products covered by the recall, Carter cautioned, “This is not going to happen overnight.”

And the fix he is bragging about merely inserts a shim in the CTS supplied pedal assembly, which is an expedient band aid in our view, and not the new design pedal assembles that Toyota  now has in production for future customers.