TORRANCE, Calif., March 8 (UPI) -- Toyota Motors Corp. said a Southern Illinois University researcher rigged a test on sudden acceleration in a way that could never occur in real life.
In February, auto engineering professor David Gilbert rewired a Toyota Avalon to demonstrate a potential cause of sudden acceleration, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Gilbert's work was the basis for a congressional panel's accusation that Toyota failed to do its own research to prove whether or not an electronic error was causing the loss of speed control in cars that led to recalls of more than 6 million vehicles.
Toyota said Monday Gilbert's experiment was "completely unrealistic."
"He rewired and re-engineered a vehicle in multiple ways in a specific sequence that is impossible to occur," company spokesman Mike Michels said as the company began a public relations counter-offensive from its U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif.
Toyota said it tried to replicate Gilbert's findings in several models, but did not achieve the same outcome. Further, rewiring a device to cause it to fail was not sound science, Toyota said.
"We could rewire this building and cause it to go into flames," said Subodh Medhekar, chief engineer with Exponent, the company Toyota hired to investigate the sudden acceleration problem.
