While preparing for a meeting in Washington with federal regulators about Toyota’s unintended acceleration problems, Irv Miller, Toyota’s vice president for environmental and public affairs, wrote in an e-mail, “We need to come clean.” Five days later, Toyota announced a recall on accelerator pedals, according to the Associated Press.

Apparently there was a push from other Toyota decision makers to avoid disclosing the accelerator pedal problems until the company was sure that the pedal was the cause of the uncontrollable acceleration.

“Now I talked with you on the phone, we should not mention about the mechanical failures of acc. pedal because we have not clarified the real cause of the sticking acc pedal formally, and the remedy for the matter has not been confirmed,” Katsuhiko Koganei, executive coordinator for corporate communications said in an e-mail earlier that day to Mike Michels, vice president of external communications. Koganei had concerns that a recall “might raise another uneasiness of customers.”

“I hate to break this to you but WE HAVE A tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models,” Miller’s email began. “We better just hope that they can get NHTSA to work with us in coming (up) with a workable solution that does not put us out of business.”

Toyota has been criticized by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for not disclosing the problems sooner.

The Toyota recall on accelerator pedals has not hurt sales.  Toyota sales in March were actually up 50% compared to 2009, thanks to 0% financing offers rolled out to entice potentially hesitant customers.