Toyota dealer and Prius owner navigate automaker's bumpy road

Wednesday was another rough day for Toyota, what with the U.S. transportation secretary’s strong words and complaints about the brakes in its hot-selling hybrid Prius. A major Southern California Toyota dealer and a Prius driver kept the faith.

The day started with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood telling a congressional subcommittee that owners of recalled Toyotas should “stop driving” their cars until they were fixed. LaHood quickly called that a mis-statement.

"Whoops," joked Billy Rinker, the general sales manager of Toyota Santa Monica, shaking off some frustration.

"It caused some phone calls this morning. When I saw it was retracted, I thought that was the right thing and it just goes to show how delicate stuff can be in the media."

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Rinker says LaHood did what he believes Toyota is trying to do: fix a mistake quickly. Almost as if on cue, Rinker found out that the first shipment of the reinforcement bar that’s supposed to fix the sticky pedal in the recalled Toyota models had arrived at his dealership.

"Toyota’s gonna come out in the next day and train our technicians on the proper installation of this," Rinker explained. "And it looks like within the next couple of days, we’re gonna be able to start getting some of these fixes going. "

Rinker says Toyota Santa Monica sold 45 cars over the weekend, a normal to good weekend at a time when Toyota was hitting serious bumps in the road. He says his dealership sells more hybrids and Priuses than any other in the country.

Over the past several months, a handful of Prius drivers have called in to describe instances when their breaks felt “weird.” Rinker says he’s explained to them that the Prius is controlled by 27 different computers, and when it hits a bump or senses a loss of traction, its anti-lock brake system kicks in.

"It will apply power, it will take it off. It will feel like the brake feels funny, it’ll feel like it’s stopping or going when it’s not supposed to," he said. "That’s the car reacting to the traction that it’s sensing. It has computers and sensors that react in milliseconds, you know, much faster than a human can be."

So, says Billy Rinker, the Prius is doing what it’s designed to do.

On Thursday, Toyota acknowledged that there were design problems with the antilock brake system in the new Prius. The Transportation Department has opened an investigation into brake problems in the 2010 model year Toyota Prius.

Jon Wax, a vice president at 20th Century Fox Television Productions, says he's experienced what Rinker's talking about very occasionally. He bought his 2010 Prius last September, in part because his company offered an incentive to employees who bought hybrid vehicles. Wax says he’s always visited online chat forums about his car – and so far, what he’s read has been reassuring.

"Certainly it’s concerning," says Wax. "But I’ve yet to have it feel like a life or death or critical situation for me and in every other respect, I’ve been really happy with the car. So I am to this point, haven’t experienced anything that makes me want to change my vehicle."

In the basement lot at Fox, Jon Wax’s gray Prius was parked right next to one that looked just like it. And another one just like that was parked not far away. If anyone’s losing faith in Toyota, they’re not parked in this lot.