Newsgroup: it.discussioni.auto
Titolo: Mitsu-Scandalo nei dettagli...

Non c'è bisogno di commento >:(
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Mitsubishi Admits to Cover-Ups
By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer
TOKYO (AP) - For years, employees at Mitsubishi Motors Corp. tucked
consumer complaints about auto defects away by the dozen in a special
place. That was the file known to workers as ``H,'' for the Japanese
word for ``secret'' or ``defer.''
According to Transport Ministry official Yukikazu Komiyama, Mitsubishi
Motors was hiding about 64,000 consumer complaints.
The complaints by Japanese consumers were never reported to
authorities - they stayed filed, awaiting clarification, explanation
or documentation that usually never came.
The defects, including failing brakes, fuel leaks, malfunctioning
clutches and fuel tanks prone to falling off, were fixed on a
case-by-case basis to avoid any humiliating recalls.
As it announced another recall Tuesday affecting 88,000 cars and
trucks, half of them in the United States, Mitsubishi acknowledged the
long-time cover-up.
In documents submitted to the government, the automaker said the
practice dated back to 1977 and was carried out with the full
knowledge of workers, managers, even one current board member.
The revelation is a blow to the struggling automaker, which is likely
to face an uphill battle regaining consumers' shattered faith in its
ethics and the quality of its vehicles. Last month, the heavily
indebted automaker signed a deal to sell German-American
DaimlerChrysler a 34 percent stake.
``It's definitely another problem for Mitsubishi Motors,'' said
Noriyuki Matsushima, auto analyst with Nikko Salomon Smith Barney in
Tokyo. ``It can hope to win back social credibility once it takes
proper steps to rectify its mistakes.''
The recalls announced Tuesday by Mitsubishi are based on eight defects
and supplement recalls announced last month on 532,000 vehicles.
The latest recalls cover about 45,000 vehicles exported to the United
States . Brakes may fail in the Montero sport utility vehicle because
of leaking brake fluid, a gas tank weld may come loose in the Galant
sedan and the Mirage may stall out because of a defective engine
shaft.
Mitsubishi Motors America spokesman Kim Custer said the U.S. complaint
system was separate from the one used in Japan. The U.S. sales arm had
previously conducted several of the recalls that its Japanese parent
is now authorizing domestically, he said.
At a time when Mitsubishi is struggling to turn around lagging sales,
the recalls will cost it $69 million.
For the fiscal year ending in March, Mitsubishi posted $213 million in
losses. The company had gone into the black in the previous fiscal
year but posted a loss of $940 million in fiscal 1997, when auto
demand slumped at home and the rest of Asia.
Ironically, when Katsuhiko Kawasoe took over as president three years
ago, he promised to clean up Mitsubishi. His predecessor resigned to
take responsibility for a scandal involving payoffs to racketeers.
Kawasoe denied personal knowledge of the cover-up of defects and
refused to resign. He promised further reforms - a panel with
outsiders to monitor product quality, and executive pay cuts.
Tatsuro Nakagami, executive officer in charge of product quality, said
he knew of the ``H'' file, which included data on three or four
potential recalls a year, but did not realize that the policy was
illegal. There have been various reports from Mitsubishi officials
about what the ``H'' stood for: ``hikoukai,'' which means to conceal,
``himitsu, or secret, or ``horyu,'' or defer.
The Transportation Ministry accused Mitsubishi of systemically hiding
defects as a policy and said it was studying possible penalties.
The cover-ups surfaced in a recent government inspection, when
officials found batches of documents about driver complaints that they
had never seen before, stashed away in a Mitsubishi locker room.
In order to avert recalls, Mitsubishi contacted owners through dealers
and fixed the problems without reporting them.
Although no accidents linked to the defects have been reported abroad,
there were at least three in Japan, Mitsubishi said.
Two were minor crashes without injury, but a brake defect in a
Mitsubishi Pajero, sold as the Montero in the United States, caused it
to crash into the rear of another car in June. Two people in the front
car suffered minor whiplash, and Mitsubishi is looking into possible
compensation.
``The problem was the lack of conscience among our employees,''
Kawasoe said. ``There was an impression that recalls meant we were
making shoddy cars.''
***
See you,
        Silver Drake
 Mitsubishi Colt Special Action
     "Sportivitas et benza"
      Radio Hell - 666 MHz
        "Here To Stay!"

 wrote in message
39a4d6b3...@news.cineca.it...


 si ergette sul fracasso
dichiarando:
|Non ti conveniva copiare l'articolo in italiano(!!!!!) che c'era su "La
|Stampa" di ieri????
Sorry, non avendo La Stampa a disposizione... :P
See you,
            Silver Drake
-- 
       Mitsubishi Colt SA Pilot
   with mighty DeltaplanoTM aerobrake
     barba, guanti & alettone 23/75
      [silverdrake(a)
bigfoot.com
]
     Il componente più importante di 
      un'auto è sempre il meccanico

        "Here To Stay!"
 Saluti, Matteo                     
 
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