Not so long ago, Toyota Motors Corporation Akio Toyoda has apologized for his company’s debacle surrounding flaws with various car models. It was a gallant stand, but is it worth praising for someone to do what he or she is required to ethically do?

Obviously not.

The Japanese car maker has taken responsibility for their company’s mistakes, which is an indication of a good and ethical leadership. They didn’t shift blame to others nor did they use passive voice such as “mistakes were made”, or simply deny that there was problem.

Apologies seems to be the hallmarks of many failures and we have seen enough of these – from business executives down to political leaders. But then, apologies are just merely a few words strung together. The utterance is obviously necessary. But they are not sufficient. They hardly constitute restitution for the millions of their customers who bought thinking accelerator pedal and brakes would work properly.

The current fiasco has generated a whole lot of rumors, where one of the most impending was the company knew about the defect since mid last year but still decided to release it. But we don’t have the facts yet. It is not too soon either to rightfully expect Toyota will do everything to protect the rights of it’s consumers, as to improve design and demonstrate to shareholders that people are the company’s first concern.

In the long run, the best way is still to find ways how to repair company’s image and boost value of its stock that has dropped 20% over the last two weeks. After all, it never too late to right a wrong, or at the safest, better late than never.

It seems Toyota’s big recall problem is getting worse as days pass by. After the stoppage of selling for eight of its models that were involved in the recall for sticking accelerator pedal, the latest blow came when Consumer Reports suspended its recommendation of the models involved. Over the years, CR has lavished recommendation on Toyota’s cars and trucks in large part because they have been very, very reliable.

In essence, does this mean that Toyota’s quality is not worth recommending? In U.S. where quality is there cornerstone, many people are thinking twice about it. Although, CR still recommended 27 of its 32 models before, today, that number is now down to 15.

Well, if they are not convinced that it is not bad enough, there is an even bigger threat to the Japanese carmakers image. The company is no stranger to recalls, but to its credit Toyota has handled them swiftly and kept customers happy whenever the same type of issue rose.

But sure, this is a different story. Now, they are under fire, as the Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said his panel plans a hearing come the second month of the year. They want to look upon whether Toyota knew about the matter and when and if the carmaker moved responded quickly with a remedy. Whatever it may be, still, the news from Consumer Reports is a body blow, but the government hearings could be worse.

What members of the Congress were wondering is if Toyota dragged its feet while sudden acceleration accidents continued to happen. Representative Bart Stupak went so far as saying; “Incidents of sticking accelerators have been ongoing with Toyota vehicles for up to a decade and have led to a disproportionate number of deaths,”

But the good thing, consumers didn’t felt irritated by this issue. Adam Simms, owner of Tyota of Sunnyvale said, “He has almost 100 employees taking calls and he says so long as everything is explained, his customers have been OK with all that has happened.”

Whatever is this, we still know that Toyota must fixed this brouhaha.