Toyota chief to testify before House panel

WASHINGTON/DETROIT (Reuters) - The embattled global boss of Toyota Motor Corp, under pressure over a series of safety recalls, has agreed to appear before U.S. lawmakers next Wednesday.

A U.S. congressional panel had invited Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder of the world's No. 1 carmaker, on Thursday, while also subpoenaing internal documents Toyota had fought to keep sealed.

"I look forward to speaking directly with Congress and the American people," Toyoda said in a statement, a day after he had indicated he preferred to send the automaker's North American chief to represent the company before the panel.

The invitation by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee marked an escalation of the political pressure on Toyota in its largest market a month into a safety crisis that has tarnished its reputation and hurt sales.

It also cast the spotlight on Toyoda, who has at times appeared uneasy with the heightened scrutiny just seven months into his tenure in the top job at the automaker.

The House panel said it had also issued a subpoena for internal documents Toyota had fought to keep sealed as part of a legal battle with a former employee who says the automaker routinely hid evidence of safety problems.

The White House stepped into the fray when spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration hoped Toyota would do all it could to rectify "a dangerous situation."

"Everybody, I think, is rightly concerned about the recalls that have happened," Gibbs said.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, chairman of the oversight panel, said he had sent an invitation to Toyoda to appear.

Toyoda had told reporters on Wednesday that he would dispatch the company's North American chief, Yoshimi Inaba, to the briefing but had no plans to appear himself unless he was formally summoned.

The ranking Republican on the panel, Rep. Darrell Issa, had been pressing for Toyoda to appear and said he would support issuing a subpoena to compel Toyoda to testify if necessary.

In a letter sent to Toyoda, Towns, a Democrat from New York, indicated that he had also come around to the view that only an appearance by the head of Toyota could answer all of the questions surrounding the automaker's recalls and criticism that it ignored safety warnings.

"There appears to be growing public confusion regarding which vehicles may be affected and how people should respond," Towns said. "In short, the public is unsure what exactly the problem is, whether it is safe to drive their cars, or what they should do about it. To help clarify the situation, I am inviting you to testify."

In response to Toyoda's acceptance late on Thursday, Towns and Issa said in a joint statement: "We believe his testimony will be helpful in understanding the actions Toyota is taking to ensure the safety of American drivers."

The House oversight hearing on Wednesday is one of two congressional inquiries into the Toyota safety crisis set for next week. On Tuesday, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold its own hearing.

In preparation for the hearing, the oversight panel has also asked major insurers for any information they provided to U.S. safety regulators on reports of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.

Up to 34 crash deaths have been blamed on unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles since 2000, according to complaints filed with U.S. regulators.

Jim Cain, an automotive industry veteran with a background in crisis communications at The Quell Group, said Toyoda had no choice but to appear when summoned.

"There are plenty of people who can respond to the questions that Congress and investigators are going to have about what exactly happened and when, but we need to have that assurance as Americans, as consumers, as investors, as dealers from the person who is leading that company, whose name is on the building," Cain said.

REPUTATION AT RISK

Toyota has recalled more than 6 million vehicles in the U.S. market for problems involving the accelerator pedal becoming stuck, either by a loose floor mat or because of a glitch in the pedal assembly itself.

A separate recall is under way to fix software controlling the brakes on the Prius hybrid. The global number of vehicles now under recall is about 8.5 million.

Complaints about unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles have been rising for the past decade, leading some safety advocates and lawyers for crash victims to question whether the electronic throttle control system that Toyota began using widely during that time is to blame.

By issuing a subpoena for thousands of pages of internal Toyota documents, the House oversight panel injected itself into a dispute between the automaker and a former employee at its Los Angeles-area U.S. headquarters.

Dimitrios Biller, who headed a corporate legal team that defended Toyota in rollover-accident lawsuits, took some 6,000 internal documents with him when he left Toyota in 2007, and has since sued the automaker under U.S. racketeering laws.

He has said the documents support his allegations that the company systematically hid or destroyed legal evidence that would have led to costly trials in the United States.

Toyota sought -- and won -- a ruling from a court-appointed arbitrator to keep Biller from making the documents public.

In a separate move that points toward the risk of a wider recall, NHTSA filed paperwork on Thursday confirming that it had opened an investigation into the Toyota Corolla and Matrix models. The agency said it had received 168 complaints alleging that steering on the vehicles can "wander and drift."

The preliminary review, which could affect an estimated 487,000 vehicles, cited seven complaints involving 2009 models and one for 2010 cars. Owners allege eight crashes and 11 injuries, none fatal, according to NHTSA.

Preliminary investigations are a common step by regulators and are often closed without leading to a recall.

Analysts said the more serious threat to Toyota was not the direct financial cost of further recalls but the potential damage to a brand that has been seen as the industry standard for quality.

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For a Reuters Insider story on Toyota, see

Honda, Nissan May Overtake Toyota: StarMine

link.reuters.com/kyv99h

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Toyota said it was looking into complaints about the steering systems of the Corolla. It has said it would recall the car only if it found a safety risk.

Toyota's safety woes are deepening at a time when automakers worldwide are struggling to emerge from a deep decline in sales -- led by a collapse in the U.S. market -- that prompted bankruptcies and consolidation.

Toyota's U.S. sales dropped 16 percent in January and are expected to take a big hit in February as well.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Helen Massy-Beresford in Paris, Jeff Mason and Caren Bohan aboard Air Force One; writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Chris Gallagher, Will Waterman and Matthew Lewis)