Sadly, I think you hit the nail on the head. I have a hard time believing that toyota would be dropping their quality standards, a lot easier believing the fault lies with locals who don't posess japanese pride.
From what I've heard, this shouldn't be an issue. I think it's common knowledge that every worker on a Toyota assembly line can stop the line at any time to fix a problem before it gets passed along to the consumer, and Toyota makes a real effort to find faults and problems with their vehicles BEFORE they reach the public. This is the way things are done in their plants whether in Japan or North America. I have to believe that everybody involved in putting Toyotas together knows that quality is what keeps their product selling, and that they have to do whatever they can to keep that quality as high possible.
The old "fat and razy Amellican" worker stereotype (remembering an old SNL sketch here) is a classic, and not without reason, but I don't think it can be universally applied to every American assembly line worker, or every American assembly line.
I have to suspect that Toyota is planning some sort of heavy duty, dually, Diesel type shenanigans sometime in the near future. They have always played this game where they reveal some show car or concept car or spy shotor artist's rendering and then play real coy about it, saying "we are considering" or "we may" or "we haven't decided to" or "this is just for research and may never happen". It always seems to make it to production. Toyota has been talking about Diesels and duallies since before the new Tundra was released. I think there's something big coming down the line real soon...
