NEW YORK, USA AFP) — As problems with Toyota vehicles mount, forcing the largest auto recall in history, the Japanese firm’s media-cautious culture is under the spotlight, exposing weak crisis management.

“It came across to the public as if they were hoping the government would not find out… it looks like all they cared about was their bottom line,” said Glenn Selig, founder of public relations (PR) firm The Publicity Agency.

“The first rule of PR is get ahead of the story,” Selig said, by tackling problems head-on as they come up.

“For Toyota, it’s just getting worse and worse because they didn’t come clean in the first place,” he added.

The Japanese carmaker quietly fixed accelerator problems on right-hand drive vehicles, without issuing a recall.

Toyota also secretly modified the brakes of its new 2010 Prius hybrid vehicles in January, before being cornered into announcing an international recall Tuesday of 437,000 hybrid vehicles.

In the United States, the company resumed sales of vehicles suspended over accelerator problems, but made no announcement.

The conduct of Toyota president Akio Toyoda has been emblematic of this corporate attitude. Having remained silent in the first days of the crisis, Toyoda was forced to speak publicly about it to limit the damage to the image of the world’s largest automaker, known for quality cars and trucks.

The grandson of Toyota’s founder engaged in public apologies, bowing before the cameras and promising in English: “Toyota cars are safe.”

Toyota is expected to testify in the US Congress about the auto giant’s mass safety recalls, Seiji Maehara, the Japanese transportation minister, said on Wednesday.

In an opinion article published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Toyoda wrote that he accepts “personal responsibility” for the automaker’s recalls and safety woes and vowed to rebuild confidence in the company.

Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales USA, has given multiple interviews, and has been responding to questions posted on news sharing website Digg.com.

Lentz signed a letter published in 20 major US newspapers outlining the steps Toyota has taken to repair recalled vehicles.

Toyota employees have joined the effort, showing up in Washington on Tuesday to meet lawmakers and remind them that the Japanese firm employs 172,000 people in North America.

On Twitter.com, Toyota speaks directly to consumers, ‘tweeting’: “Don’t give up on us, we are working hard to make this right.”

The vast market of social-networking sites, however, can be a double-edged sword, as consumers can vent their frustration.

“I’ve owned Toyotas since 1969,” one person wrote on Facebook.com.

“They seem to have meant fixing defects prospectively, in new cars, not fixing them retrospectively, in cars already sold. All of Toyota’s recent ‘voluntary’ recalls have been under pressure from safety regulators in Japan, Europe, and the USA.”

Some blogs have voiced scepticism about Toyota’s commitment to improve safety.

“First the accelerator sticks and now the brakes don’t work. Enough with the hollow apologies… We expect more,” Internet newspaper The Huffington Post said.

Selig says Toyota has not done enough to win the PR battle.

“They should have offered rental cars to people,” he said. “It would have cost them a lot of money”, but it would have preserved their brand image.

“They need to acknowledge what went wrong, that they grew too fast” and that they will restore the quality that put Toyota at the top of the auto sector, he said.