Outrage! Nakai-san (left) doesn’t bow the full 70 degrees! (c) Bertel Schmitt
I am just coming home from a most bewildering press conference. There are 253 cars out there, I was told today, where the horn may be a tad louder, or the body a millimeter wider than what’s in the catalogue. I had to go all the way to Yokohama to hear this. Europe is in the grips of wholesale dieselgate-cheating. America’s smallest carmaker with the biggest share of voice, Tesla, makes cars so bad that there are hit parades of problems with its Model 3. Not to be left out, Japan created its own problem, and it seems to be Nissan, the people who’s press conference I visited this afternoon. The weather was O.K. when I left, but heaven cried when I went home.
Today, three dour-looking gentlemen, dressed in the internationally accepted uniform of undertakers, presented to the media Nissan’s “Report to the Japanese Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on misconduct in sample testing within the final vehicle inspection process at plants in Japan.” In the interest of not wasting your time more than absolutely necessary, let’s just state that unless someone is messing up real bad real soon, good old Japan is in imminent danger of being left behind as far as industrial-strength misconduct goes. [Continue Reading]
