So you’re saying that Toyotas are safe then.

I was thinking I may have hammered Toyota a bit too much in my recent post, after all, they have a Herculean task ahead in getting people to trust them again, not to mention having a variety of models each needing their own identities; not unlike many automakers and certainly a large undertaking for any agency. But then I came across yet another tie-in that dictionary.com tends to run, and I was like, here we go, thanks for proving the point. Which is that I while I appreciate what they need to do, it shouldn’t come at the expense of the existing owner community. I’ve said before that an ad won’t make me buy something, no matter how well it scores in recall tests. I also don’t want to be embarrassed by what I see. Where I come out is that a lot of the things I see from them now talk down to me as an owner. I don’t need puns. I don’t need scare tactics masquerading as safety features. I want smart work that tells me what I already know about the brand I trust. That’s what Honda has been able to do consistently for a long time, and it’s what Toyota needs to get back to.