Executives of U.S. automakers often grouse when their vehicles are disparaged for defects and lapses in quality, saying models built by foreign automakers, especially Toyota Motor Corp., aren't judged as harshly.
The bellyachers now can count on a key ally in their campaign, as they put it, to level the playing field: Katsuaki Watanabe, the president of Toyota.
Last week, Watanabe said that Toyota has a quality problem that is more serious than any detected by surveys or publications such as Consumer Reports. The Toyota president promised that the company intends to regain consumer confidence and to revamp its quality-control processes, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a Japanese financial newspaper.
``We're not perfect, we know that,'' said Dennis Cuneo, Toyota senior vice president in the U.S. ``We're humans. We always want to guard against being complacent.''
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