Friday 5 February 2010

TOYOTA RESPONDS TO MASSIVE RECALL, FACES NEW PRIUS PROBLEM


Toyota has had a very rough couple of weeks. The company faced the largest vehicle recall in its history when about 2.4 million vehicles, including the Corolla, were recalled into American dealerships due to an accelerator fault.

Basically the fault causes the accelerator pedal to stick on the carpet such that the car doesn’t stop accelerating when the driver removes his/ her foot off it. This of course could (and has in at least two cases) cause serious accidents.

Yesterday Toyota issued a statement saying:
“Toyota South Africa Motors have been able to isolate the Auris, new generation Verso and Corolla as part of the technical study of all the vehicles that are sold in South Africa. This would imply that these three model ranges will in all possibility be included in the South African recall programme. Toyota has not excluded any other vehicle yet and will be in a position to clearly communicate which model ranges and specific date ranges for those recalled models by next week (the week of 8-12 February).”

So we’ll see what happens next week, which cars are recalled and which stay behind.

In related news, a growing number of Prius Hybrid owners in Japan and the US have reported failing brakes on their cars. That has sparked a brand new recall programme affecting about 270 000 Prius Hybrids to further give the world’s biggest automaker (in terms of sales) headaches. It might help to say we had the Prius on test a couple of weeks ago and didn’t experience any brake problems.

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