I know I'm going to get raspberries from many here, but this IS my theory...... Toyota has decided to allow GM to regain some of their foothold in the market. Those guys have been in bed together for quite a long time and many projects (Tundra, Matrix/Vibe etc...) Industry insiders tell me that gas pedal issue is nowhere near the catastrophe Toyota has made it out to be. I think they are helping out their GM buddies. Call me crazy.
IMHO the big deal is that Toyota "has" a recall. When I was working for an Olds dealer in 1986 we built a new dealership near a new Toyota dealership. Dealers hold on to warranty replacement parts until a factory rep examines them or gives the "ok" to scrap the parts. When we and the Toyota dealership had been in our new locations for 3 or so months I visited the Toyota parts manager and noticed his "warranty bin". IIRC there were 4 or 5 warranty parts, my warranty bin probably had 80-90 defective parts. Toyota and GM have been in business together since the come back of the Nova in the early 80's and the Geo car line that Chevrolet used to sell. AAMOF GM was building one of the Honda models at one time, although it was sold directly by Isuzu to Honda. Isuzu had the same vehicle but GM built that vehicle for Isuzu. Long ago Isuzu built the small Chevy Luv pickups, some time in the
90's that reversed and GM built Isuzu pickups. They are all in bed with each other in some way shape or form but it is not news to hear about an American car builder with recall problems, it is out of the ordinary for Toyota or Honda to have recalls at all. IIRC this recall is supposed to cost Toyota $240,000,000.00. That is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what a typical GM recall would cost. I would speculate to say that GM probably would not have been in trouble at all had it not spent so much money on correcting something that should not have been a problem to start with.