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Toyota Goes on Offensive to Discredit Critics - COMPLETE VIDEO


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Toyota Test Refutes Claims and Smashes ABC, Gilbert and Ambulance Chasers - COMPLETE VIDEO

Toyota took its strongest step yet Monday to silence critics who blame faulty electronics for runaway cars and trucks.

AUTO CENTRAL - March 9, 2010: In an MSNBC story that we already know, Toyota assembled a group of experts to refute studies by an Illinois professor who revved Toyota engines simply by short-circuiting the wiring.

Toyota's experts say the experiments were done under conditions that would never happen on the road. The automaker maintained its assertion that simpler mechanical flaws, not electronics, were to blame.

Meanwhile, over at ABC (the TV network that aired the Gilbert video), they've published a story that includes new comments by Sean Kane. Sean Kane is the "advocate for trial lawyers" that asked Gilbert to conduct the test. In response to the Toyota test he said "...the Toyota demonstration misstated what Gilbert had done, that it was never meant to show a real world condition, and that what Gilbert had done was simple rather than difficult."

According to the ABC story, Kane then added, "We heard a lot about reengineering, rewiring, reconfiguring and this was nothing of the sort," said Kane. "It was simply a connection of the resistance to the circuit." "The significant reengineering they describe is really nothing more than very basic test methods that are used in labs regularly by people like Dr. Gilbert and other folks that do automotive technology work." Kane said that Gilbert was not trying to suggest a specific scenario for short circuits, merely that it was possible to create one, and that some means would not require abrasion or corrosion to the wires. "We don't know why, how that can happen in the real world."

Kane didn't mention why neither Gilbert nor Brian Ross, the reporter in the ABC news video, failed to point out that the test they were conducting couldn't possibily happen in any real world situation. There was also still no comment from Kane as to why he felt the need to conduct a phony test after his own company produced an extensive report that couldn't find fault with Toyota vehicles.

For more about the Sean Kane question CLICK HERE

Meeting with reporters, Toyota addressed the work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, whose work has been the basis of doubts about Toyota's mechanical fixes, and was included in a recent ABC News report.

According to USA Today, ABC News confirmed to one source that footage in a news report showing Professor David Gilbert's test car being driven by reporter Brian Ross was altered

. Chris Gerdes, director of Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research, and a consulting firm, Exponent Inc., rejected the professor's findings.

Toyota's assembled experts said the professor's experiments could not be recreated on the actual road. For example, they said, Gilbert had shaved away insulation on wiring and connected wires that would not normally touch each other.

Click here for more at MSNBC on Toyota’s quest to disprove claims of electronic malfunction in its vehicles.