Friday 29 January 2010

Toyota May Kill You Today or Tomorrow

As it was revealed that a small number of Ford Transit vans share the same defective Chinese-made accelerator pedal that caused the urgent recall of 1.8m Toyotas in Europe and 3.4m in the United States, worried vehicle owners around the world are desperately searching for a car that might not kill them.

"I thought Hondas were a pretty safe bet," said one concerned parent. "But they're recalling cars over a window-heater switch that incinerates the entire car when it fails. It looks like I'll be doing a lot of walking from now on."

China insisted that it was working hard to develop a product that actually worked.

"Unfortunately, our courts would be facing a huge backlog if we tried and executed every factory manager with a laissez-faire attitude to quality control," said a spokesman for the Chinese government. "And international calls for fair trials aren't going to make things any easier."

With scant hopes of finding a car in production today without at least one potentially-lethal Chinese component waiting to maim, roast or skewer its hapless occupants, the British government is rumoured to be considering a non-scrappage scheme, in which owners of cars more than ten years old would be paid £2000 not to replace them with a murderous new model.

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