Faking a recall is a bad idea. Consider the possibility that Toyota drivers were primed by the media hype to believe that the acceleration problems were real and out of their control. Thus, when they found themselves mistakenly pressing on the accelerator, they were less likely to reevaluate the situation. If they had, they would have realized what was happening and pressed the brakes. The accidents, regardless of cause, were real and dangerous. Inducing more accidents to prove a point is bad policy.
It's not exactly reflected in the valuation and Jason recognized that in the comments in the article:
"If you look at smaller acquisitions like mine (i.e. not like the $170m Mint acquisition), valuations like "N times revenue" or "N times profitability" is less correlated with sales, where as "N times number of founders" is closer to what happens."