Last month, when Suzuki Motor Corp. announced it had made "mistakes" in measuring the fuel economy capabilities of its automobiles, people were surprised, but not for the reasons you might think.

According to various media reports, the automaker, which specializes in kei jidōsha, or "minicars" (engine displacement of no more than 660 cc), had carried out an internal investigation of its methods for determining gasoline mileage, after Mitsubishi Motors Corp. admitted it had falsified similar data for its own products. What surprised people was not so much that Suzuki had been faking its numbers — most consumers probably take the mileage figures claimed by carmakers in their catalogues with a grain of salt — but that Suzuki voluntarily exposed itself as having produced wrong numbers. Though the transport ministry had urged automakers to check their own data-collecting and reporting circumstances in light of the Mitsubishi scandal, it's generally understood that the ministry is pretty lax about checking up on the veracity of the figures that manufacturers release.

Suzuki denied that there was anything underhanded about the problem. The company's engineers were just trying to get "consistent data," a Suzuki executive told the press. Mitsubishi, on the other hand, deliberately manipulated its mileage data, and the distinction is important, at least for public relations purposes.