Takata Emails Show Brash Exchanges About Data Tampering; New York Times, 1/4/16

Danielle Ivory and Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times; Takata Emails Show Brash Exchanges About Data Tampering:

"When Honda Motor Company said two months ago that it would no longer use Takata as supplier of its airbags, the automaker said that testing data on the airbags had been “misrepresented and manipulated.”

Now, newly obtained internal emails suggest the manipulation was both bold and broad, involving open exchanges among Takata employees in Japan and the United States.

“Happy Manipulating!!!” a Takata airbag engineer, Bob Schubert, wrote in one email dated July 6, 2006, in a reference to results of airbag tests. In another, he wrote of changing the colors or lines in a graphic “to divert attention” from the test results and “to try to dress it up.”

The emails were among documents unsealed recently as part of a personal injury lawsuit against Takata and obtained by The New York Times...

Honda would not comment on whether the emails were examples of Takata misrepresentations. The automaker said that it had reached its conclusions after reviewing millions of internal Takata documents. But four airbag experts asked by The Times to review the emails said that they suggested an effort to misrepresent testing data.

“To have these kinds of offhand remarks shows that this is a systemic issue at Takata,” said Mark Lillie, a former Takata engineer and whistle-blower."