DENSO likes to pose as the respectable face of Japanese engineering. The press releases are clean, the awards shiny, the smiles polished. And Cummins? They’ve paraded DENSO around like a model partner. But peel back the PR, and you find rot – cartel fines, executives caught with their hands in the shredder, parts that fail so catastrophically they leave people shitting themselves on the motorway.

This isn’t a slip of the pen or a minor scandal. It’s a culture. A long, grubby pattern of cutting corners, cooking the books, and fucking over customers while pretending it’s all about innovation.

Price-Fixing – Corporate Theft In Plain Sight

2012. The FBI raids. The DOJ charges. DENSO pleads guilty to fixing prices on car parts, gouging manufacturers and drivers alike. Seventy-eight million dollars in criminal fines. Civil suits followed, and by 2016 they’d paid out another $193.8 million in settlements. That’s not pocket change – that’s cartel money.

Call it what it is: organised theft. Suits in boardrooms deciding you’ll pay more because they’ve rigged the market. Parasites in ties.

Executives – Delete, Deny, And Hope No One Notices

When the walls closed in, DENSO’s brass didn’t come clean. They panicked. One exec got caught deleting incriminating emails after the FBI raid – as if hammering the delete key could wash away the stench. He pled guilty to obstruction.

That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice. Arse-covering of the worst kind. Crooks in cufflinks who thought the law was optional until the Feds walked through the door.

Product Failures – Cars Dying In The Fast Lane

The hardware is just as rotten. DENSO’s low-pressure fuel pumps warped, sucked air, failed. Engines cut out mid-drive. Not “stalled.” Died. Imagine overtaking at 70 mph and the engine goes stone dead. Steering heavy, brakes stiff, panic rising in your throat. That’s what DENSO sold.

Drivers sued. Mazda owners dragged them to court. In 2025, a settlement was approved: free repairs, reimbursements, extended warranties. Legal triage. But no payout erases the terror of watching your car fucking die in traffic because some supplier cut corners.

Workplace And Environmental Crap

Look past the big scandals and you see the background noise: OSHA citations, environmental violations, wage disputes. Not headline numbers, but steady proof of a company that treats fines like a business expense. Workers endangered, communities screwed, rules bent until they snap.

The small stuff tells the same story as the big scandals: profit first, consequences later.

Myths And Takeaways

Myth: just a few bad apples.
Truth: guilty pleas, prison sentences, and hundreds of millions paid out.

Myth: DENSO’s just another supplier.
Truth: it’s central. Cummins themselves recognised DENSO as a “top supplier,” smiling for the photos, clapping them on the back.

Which raises the obvious: how many more Cummins “partners” are running the same dirty games behind their bullshit brochures?

Why It All Matters

Because this shit isn’t abstract. It’s not just court dockets and cheques. It’s drivers left stranded in traffic. It’s families paying inflated prices for years. It’s workers risking their health while execs cash bonuses.

So the next time Cummins or DENSO puffs out its chest about ethics or values, remember the record. Remember the cartel fines, the obstruction charges, the recalls. That’s the legacy. And it stinks.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Supplier Series : DENSO – Get in the Sea