The current rash of recalls plaguing Toyota has put cars and reliability into the national news. It seems every day brings more bad news and even Honda has joined the party. So we thought it was time to stop, get some perspective, and reflect on some of the core ideas behind our show.

We have one simple goal: helping people find cars which meet their needs and are still fun to drive. Badges are mostly irrelevant to us, as every carmaker offers a range of good and bad vehicles.

Sometimes people have raged at us for not believing every BMW is amazing, or every Hyundai is terrible. We try to judge each car on its individual merits. But once a brand gets a certain reputation, good or bad, it proves very difficult to change the public’s perception. Witness Hyundai’s current tag-line of “Think about it”, acknowledging that most consumers won’t even consider their growing number of really competitive cars.

Which brings me to Toyota. In the past few decades, they have pursued the goal of surpassing GM as the largest car company in the world. And in the process, Americans not only bought millions of Toyota products, but embraced them as the leader in safe and reliable transportation for the masses.

Now due to sticking gas pedals and failing brakes, Toyota has issued recalls for more than 8 Million vehicles worldwide. That’s equivalent to nearly 5 years worth of Toyota sales in the US. And now that the Prius is included, even their most cutting edge product shows weakness.

How does this happen?

First, we must remember that every carmaker does recalls. And over the years there have been many huge recalls. With thousands of parts in each car, made by many suppliers, and built at high speed … something, somewhere is going to prove faulty. A recall doesn’t make a car fundamentally unsafe. A tiny percentage of vehicles ever suffer from faulty parts, but once that number reaches a boiling point of potential lawsuit and public outcry then the automaker must cast a wide net and try to cover everyone. A quick viewing of “Fight Club” will explain this nicely.

The real unknown is the potential damage to Toyota’s image.

Remember the Audi 5000? In the late 1980s, the 5000 was blamed for a series of accidents and deaths reportedly caused by “unintended acceleration” (Toyota’s current problem). It became a huge news story and eventually even had a live demonstration on 60 Minutes. Except that the problem was ultimately proven to not exist, the accidents were attributed to driver error, and the 60 Minutes report debunked as staged for TV. But Audi’s sales fell off a cliff, and they gained a reputation as cars that would dart off without warning. Perception was as good as truth, and Audi nearly pulled out of the US market all together.

The damning part for Toyota is the reports that they knew of these problems and never admitted it publicly until there was no choice. For a company priding itself on safety and reliability, this feels shady even if it proves to be an honest mistake lost in the red-tape of an enormous company. But Toyota is running scared, as evidenced by their new commercial showing dedicated folks hard at work fixing… well, we aren’t actually shown but every part of it has been well crafted to give us the impression that Toyota cares.

The biggest suggestion we can offer is this: Don’t Panic. If you own one of the cars in the recall, driving it to your dealer is not going to get you killed. Toyota grew quickly and began to cut corners to save costs. The result is some faulty parts. They aren’t the first automaker to do it, and they won’t be the last.

The other thing to remember is that no car company is incapable of failure… or greatness. Branch out from the brands you’ve always bought and test-drive the best cars in your market segment. We’re here to help you. And you deserve to drive something worthwhile.

There are no great brands. But there are many great cars.