Toyota Motor Corp. has criticized ABC News, saying the broadcaster "staged" part of a report that purported to show electronic problems could cause Toyota vehicles to accelerate unexpectedly, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The attack on ABC was part of what the Japanese car maker has called a broader push to rebut critics and win support for its view that the electronics in its vehicles are not defective.

At a news conference, engineering consultants hired by Toyota also showed they are able to cause vehicles made by three other auto makers to rev suddenly by making the same electronic modifications used by a college professor who was the subject of the ABC report, and who testified before Congress last month.

David W. Gilbert of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale has said he found a way to make Toyotas surge by causing a short in the wires that carry signals from the gas pedal to the engine computer, and can do it in such a way that the vehicle's diagnostic system doesn't notice a fault in the circuit. According to Gilbert, that suggests sudden acceleration could be caused by electrical problems. Toyota has blamed floor mats and stick pedals for the problems.

On Feb. 22, ABC News aired a report on Gilbert's findings. In it, a Toyota Avalon sedan driven by investigative reporter Brian Ross is shown traveling about 20 miles per hour, and when Gilbert causes a short in the electronics, the engine suddenly revs and the vehicle speeds up.

The original report included a shot of the car's tachometer needle racing up to more than 6,000 revolutions per minute, near the safe limit of the engine's design. At its news conference, Toyota presented a still frame from the video that showed dashboard lights indicating the car was in park, the speedometer was at zero and the seat belts weren't buckled.

"They staged it when the car was sitting still," Toyota spokesman John Hanson said.

The discrepancies in the clip were noted by gawker.com, a media website, and on Friday ABC replaced that part of the video on its website. The new clip shows a shaky video of a tachometer surging inside a moving vehicle, though it doesn't reach 6,000 rpm.