Japanese recalls getting out of hand

Recently, Nissan Motors announced that they were recalling 686,500 Altimas and Sentras, due to a faulty crankshaft position sensors. This fault makes the car stop running, at any point during operation. The sensor overheats and fails, which causes the spark timing to stop.

This is just the latest flurry of Japanese recalls in the last 2 years. In 2006, Toyota Motor Corp (Toy, Lexus, Scion) recalled 2.2 million cars and trucks for different faults including seat belt and brake system failures. Basically, your brakes would fail, you get in a crash, and your seatbelt fails on you in the process, causing you great harm. The car slaps you across the face, then kicks you in the nuts in one foul swoop.

This year, Toyota is already up to 800,000 recalls. That's 3 million in 2 years (and counting...remember, 2007 isn't over). The latest one: a poorly designed driver's side floor mat catches the accelerator pedal - causing it to stick! 34,400 lucky LEXUS owners can expect some mail from Toyota regarding this issue.

What happened to Japanese reliability? It seems as if there has been a great shift over from Japan to the US automakers in reliability ratings. Chevrolet and Ford are skyrocketing, while Toyota and Nissan are drowning in their wake. In prior years, one publication would give an automatic recommendation to any Toyota model they reviewed. They stopped this practice in 2006, due to the immense rate of recalls.

One reason that this could be happening is that US automakers have lured quality control managers from Japanese companies to work in their plants. They have made their production "Japanese-like" in efforts to catch back up to the Japanese producers. They have reduced costs, while reducing the number of defects at the same time. Production lines are streamlined, and the cars being produced are of greater quality.

So what does this mean? Hopefully there will be another great shift in the auto industry back to American-made cars. Our economy needs a boost, and if the Big Three make money, it can only help out the overall well-being of this country.

Go USA! Go GM, Ford, and Chrylser! You have finally figured it out.