Toyota Is Not Off the Hook, Poll Says

Toyota's many problems and not at all diminished by the recalls by other big automakers, according to a recent poll by TheStreet.

Author:: Andrea Tse
Publish date:: Mar 15, 2010 7:10 AM EDT

(Toyota sudden acceleration poll results article updated with additional information regarding recent alleged Toyota sudden acceleration incidents, as well as updated stock prices.)

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Recalls by other big automakers do nothing to diminish

Toyota's

(TM) - Get Report

many problems, according to

a recent poll by TheStreet

The other automakers' recalls haven't diverted attention away from or minimized the impact of Toyota's own problems, according to 74.8% of

TheStreet

users.

On the other hand, 25.2% of voters in the poll do, in fact, credit Toyota for engaging its in recalls without pointing fingers at the rest of the auto industry -- or calling attention to the fact that Toyota is far from alone in dealing with recall issues.

"They can say 'other companies are struggling too; we're not the only ones,' but they haven't played that card, which is the right thing to do," Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell says. Caldwell says it's the "mature" thing to do.

Toyota's stock finished the week flat, less than 0.1% higher at $77 a share. In pre-market trading Monday morning, shares of Toyota were down 23 cents to $76.76. Meanwhile, Toyota's massive PR machine is now in full play, but trying to smooth over allegations that its rapid acceleration issues have been connected with a reported 52 fatalities is no small task.

What's more, is that even though Toyota has already recalled about 8.5 million vehicles globally, assembled a garrison of inside and outside auto experts to discredit critics of its electronic systems, and pushed its president, Akio Toyoda, to the front line of congressional hearings in Washington on Toyota's safety problems -- all in hopes of putting the past behind and moving on to winning back market share with aggressive customer incentives like sweet financing deals -- Toyota's accelerator issues have been coming back to haunt the automaker in the recent days.

Most recently, investigators were looking into two

runaway Prius incidents

that occurred in the week of the eighth -- one on a San Diego highway and the other in a New York City suburb -- and trying ascertain the cause of the incidents. Toyota and federal investigators are apparently unable to replicate the

San Diego runaway incident

, raising questions about the credibility of the report, according to the

Associated Press.

By Monday morning, ABC News was reporting that it had obtained a congressional memo that questioned the legitimacy of the claims by San Diego driver James Sikes -- although it is worth noting that Sikes has not filed a lawsuit and claims he will

never

filed a lawsuit, and that the California Highway Patrol is standing by its original report, which asserted that Sikes' claim was a legitimate one.

One thing is for sure though. In light of the heightened anxiety surrounding Toyota and the industry's safety issues, runaway Toyota cases, credible or not, could easily become high-profile like the ones that occurred over the past week. This, of course just adds more pressure on Toyota's PR machine as it tries to repair the dented image of the automaker, which has become the poster child for industry-wide safety issues.

Nissan

(NSANY)

Ford

(F) - Get Report

Chrysler

and

Honda

(HMC) - Get Report

have all issued recalls recently.

On his CNBC

Mad Money

show, Jim Cramer advised selling Toyota and picking up an industrial stock such as