Toyota Australia's $2 billion Problem: Those dodgy DPFs won't go away
Toyota Australia is looking at a potential billion-dollar class action in Federal Court. All thanks to dishonesty and those poorly designed DPFs…
Toyota Australia, the King of Mediocrity, leader of the market, most boring carmaker in the world, as voted by me, is now looking down the barrel of a possible $2 billion Class Action in the Federal Court.
It’s all thanks to its own disgraceful DPF design deficiency, made worse with a little dishonesty on the side. Here’s what happened.
The Australian Federal Court has found in favour of Hilux, Fortuner and Prado owners (remembering Prado is not the same as a real LandCruiser), for vehicles sold between October 2015 and April 2020.
The big announcement came via legal media outlet Lawyerly.
So, if all eligible 2.8 diesel Toyota dodgy-DPF owners step forward with their account numbers and BSBs, senior executives at Toyota Australia could be looking at begging Akio Toyoda himself for more than $2 billion. Goodbye, performance bonuses. It’s been emotional.
In case you missed it: Toyota is now appealing the Federal Court ruling as registration opens for dodgy DPF compensation
If you’ve been affected by the 2.8 diesel Hilux/Prado/Fortuna DPF problem, register here for compensation >>
This is about two things. The design deficiency, and the company being misleading about it. If you don’t know, at this point, what a diesel particulate filter is, click here >>
Toyota, of course, claimed that it had always been a knight in shining armour throughout all of this unpleasantness, despite my recollection that - for some years - they just ignored the existence of the defect, at least publicly.
They even sent a tiny aftermarket servicing shop - Berrima Diesel - a very pompous and cranky-sounding letter (download it here>>), in my opinion, drafted by their expensive lawyers, after Berrimah Diesel dudes had a spray about the defect on Facebook.
The judge - Justice Lee - found that Toyota had in fact acted like A-grade misleading corporate cocks. (I’m paraphrasing, but I do wish he had put it that way.) Instead, he actually said:
Goodness me. Dishonesty on the new car showroom floor. I do hope that doesn’t catch on, because it would make buying a new car a confronting, stressful experience for almost everyone, instead of the relaxing, upbeat and above all fair process experienced by most consumers today.
I do love it when courts make these determinations, however, because it affords even inherently timid, reserved commentators, who want to be friends with everyone, such as me, the opportunity to give it to those arseholes with both barrels. And deservedly so.
Selling vehicles known to be defective, to proud, unsuspecting Aussie bogans, whose deeply patriotic objective was to buy an ‘unbreakable’ (but defective) Hilux, then stop by the corporate welfare limpets at ARB, overload the vehicle by procuring one of everything, basically, and make the pilgrimage to Australia’s Mecca, Dingo Piss Creek.
Preferably with a giant, acoustically transparent, effluent-carrying aluminium caravan in tow. There’s nothing proud, patriotic Aussies enjoy more than sightseeing in the Outback.
Justice Lee there, again, highlighting the firmness of Toyota’s grasp on morality, seemingly. It must have been so terrible for senior executive Toyota suits to awaken that following morning, confronted by the unpalatable proposition that consumer laws actually apply to them, too. Did they think, ‘When did that happen? I thought that was just for toasters…’?
And, if you’re considering getting your expensive lawyers to write to me concerning my allegation that you are cocks, collectively, A) substantial truth, B) personal opinion, C) the cock (as in ‘rooster’) is a proud animal - meaning, it’s satire.
Even worse, perhaps, Justice Lee appears to be ruining Toyota’s ‘reliability’ reputation, a myth upon which they have dropped endlessly over the years. Potential customers are going to hear about Toyota’s long-term anti-consumer behaviour, and this disgraceful design deficiency, even in media which Toyota strives to control through its monolithic advertising spend. Oh, what a feeling.
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WHEN TOYOTA HILUX BECAME BREAKABLE
So, essentially, the diesel particulate filter in these Toyotas was poorly designed, seemingly, and (knock me down with a feather) it failed, repeatedly. My engineering sense of it was the fifth injector locked itself open and burnt the hell out of the filter’s internals, or locked itself closed and just clogged up. Then the DPF warning light came on.
Instead, fuel economy and resale value plummeted, and Toyota failed to acknowledge that this problem existed while continuing to sell them on the showroom floor, even while it strived feverishly to do the absolute minimum required to absolve itself of any responsibility.
In a statement, Toyota failed to acknowledge the existence of objective reality, seemingly:
That’s quite clever, bordering on PR genius. They are awesome at bullshit. “We believe [whatever].” The ‘genius’ part about using ‘we believe’ is that one’s beliefs don’t have to be based on evidence or facts. It must be so liberating simply to believe this or that.
Believing is not a crime, obviously, but it does allow someone an opportunity to ignore the facts, however inconvenient they might be.
Toyota went even further, angrily threatening to commit an act of careful consideration in the first degree, before speaking again. When my kids were about 15, they acted like that a lot:
So the High Court should probably free up its weighty calendar to consider some good, old-fashioned preposterous corporate bullshit, in due course. They could make it into a show on Amazon Prime.
So what does this mean for owners, possibly like you? Well, every good class action needs a lead plaintiff, who acts as a kind of cover girl for the swimsuit calendar edition.
And in this case, it’s a dude named Ken Williams, seen here brandishing a little of Toyota’s deep commitment to carbon neutrality.
Justice Lee found that Toyota’s underlying DPF misadventure resulted in a 17.5 per cent diminution in value, which, in the case of cover-girl Ken amounts to about $7500.
Mr Williams’s barristers also persuaded the judge to award cover-girl Ken more than $4500 in damages for lost income (presumably because he was unable to work while he was being expertly hamstrung, legally, by Toyota) plus an uplifting cherry on top of almost $1000 back, for paying excess GST and stamp duty.
All up, Ken is looking at more than $13,000. Individual mileage among class-action litigants will vary, of course, but there are 264,170 vehicles in the class action. So, just transferring the funds is going to require some significant person-power at Toyota headquarters.
A dude you’ve never heard of named Simon Burnett, from Balance Legal Capital, told the ABC the case was an excellent example of how pure-hearted, altruistic businesses such as Balance Legal Capital (which funded the class action) play a critical role in, “Facilitating justice for ordinary people.” Of course.
This might be playing the charity card a little too hard there, in my view.
I am paraphrasing a little regarding what Mr Burnett might have said to reporters. But I’m fairly sure Mr Burnett seems quite noble and charitable when he steps in to start speaking to the press.
My sense of it is, class actions are part big business and part informed dice-rolling. It seems that class action law firms troll through the tailings of society’s worst crises - they’re down here with us journalists, slightly below the pimps and drug dealers, but above politicians and PR operatives. It’s quite stratified down here.
When they find a nice, juicy nugget of evidence or a significant case, comprised of thousands of victims, they put together a prospectus and tender it out to various legal venture capitalists, who look at the chances of winning and the size of the likely pie, before quietly paying them in advance to get cracking, as I understand it.
Then, if the judge finds in favour of the plaintiffs, they skim the delicious ROI off the top, altruistically, the lawyers get paid, and they distribute the crumbs to the victims. Justice for ordinary people is not cheap.
So I’m pretty sure there will be a significant celebration at Balance Legal Capital, but I’m not sure how much of the rapture will actually orbit facilitating justice for ordinary people.
Matt MacKenzie, a partner at Gilbert + Tobin lawyers, wrote the above highly confidential email to class action participants recently, at about 7:30 at night (6th April, 2022), with disclosure under strict confidentiality.
Lawyers hate it when journalists do this, but they have to suck it up, upliftingly. It leaked into my inbox milliseconds later, and in it, Mr MacKenzie advised the judgement and the $13k (plus change) payout to Ken Williams, and added:
That impossibly delicious moment. I’m already ecstatically looking forward to that. Putting the reamer in the quill is always one of the more satisfying parts of any worthwhile machining operation. It’s the engagement of the Morse taper, mainly. (That’s a industry joke.)
Y’know, $2 billion is a big number, obviously, even for a carmaker such as Toyota. But the biggest victory here could be due to the impact of the ruling on Toyota’s reputation - mainly some reality, with Hilux in particular being so critical for tradies and bogans alike. That’s the real punch behind this kind of court case.
Heaven forbid, a determination such as this might force the King of Mediocrity to get its corpulent arse up off the throne and actually lift its game to the point where customer respect is elevated above the consumer law compliance threshold.
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