Toyota to recall 1.7 million vehicles worldwide

[Frank Fire]

TOKYO (AFP) – Toyota Motor is to recall nearly 1.7 million vehicles worldwide including 1.2 million in Japan and 421,000 overseas over a fuel leak risk, the automaker and the Transport Ministry said on Wednesday.

Toyota and the ministry said the recalls include around 245,000 of its luxury Lexus vehicles in the United States and 74,590 Lexus, Crown and other cars in Japan over other leakage fears.

In Japan 19 models produced between 2000 and 2009 will be affected by the recall, the ministry said.

"Slight cracks may appear on the engine fuel pipes. If it continues to be used, the crack may be widened and there may be risks of fuel leakage," the ministry said in a statement.

There have been more than 140 cases reported in Japan, with no accidents, it said.

In 2008 Toyota ended General Motors' 77-year reign as the world's largest automaker but the road has been a bumpy one for the Japanese giant, facing the impact of the economic crisis, recalls and recently a strong yen.

In the past year the automaker has pulled millions of vehicles worldwide over a range of issues following a safety crisis involving brake and accelerator defects that has tarnished its once stellar reputation.

Toyota shares tumbled 1.7 percent following news of the recall.

On Monday Toyota said its group sales in 2010 rose, enabling the firm to narrowly retain its title as the world's biggest automaker despite the global safety crisis.

Toyota's global sales rose eight percent year-on-year to 8.418 million vehicles last year, narrowly beating the 8.39 million sold by a resurgent General Motors.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110126/bs_afp/japanautocompanytoyotarecall_20110126060619

 

[Supafly]

This is bound to happen more and more, in pretty much any big car company.

They have cut shorter clocking for production steps, pushing just-in-time fabrication, wearing out the workers harder and harder.

And by doing so, workers are due to make more and more mistakes, and first small things which slip through the end controls, later, when they save more on end controls, larger mistakes are happening.

The customers pay the add-on price, crashing the vehicles.

The producers say, 'Oops, I did it again' and hope evreybody will forget soon.

 

[Frank Fire]

I have to say you are right but they have had this before so i think it time for toyota the make some changes before its to late and more people get hurt

 

[hotrod808]

thats the second time i hear toyota recalling cars. last time people died because of them not being able to build good cars. just another reason to never buy a toyota

 

[vodkazvictim]

I used to want to buy a Toyota. Now I never will. Why is big business so stupid?!

 

[bazza599]

fucks sake again guess they dont like being the worlds biggest car company how many recalls is that in recent years

 

[Supafly]

fucks sake again guess they dont like being the worlds biggest car company how many recalls is that in recent years

Just in 2010, they called back in 10 million of their vehicles. The main reasons were:

- Clamping gas pedals
- Malfunctioning brakes (Great combination!)
- Slipping Footmats

There will be more of this before they loose so many customers they feel it.

 

[YumiYumi_1988]

Whoops.

 

[PirateKing]

 

[larss]

I have owned and driven Toyota/Lexus for the past 18 years, and have NEVER had a mechanical failure. Their post sales service is excellent as well. At least they admit when there is a problem, and do something about it. There are too many other stories from other car manufacturers who try and deny that there is a problem in the first place.

 

[Supafly]

This time it is some malfunction in the foul injection system.

Ha Ha I wrote foul, meant fuel. Toyota, I blame you!

 

[Namreg]

toyotas remain the most reliable cars in the world, while companies like ford and chrysler have to recall millions of vehicles year after year after year, due to such nice 'features' as fires starting in the cruise control unit even when the engine is not running (14 milion fords recalled over a 10 year period due to the same problem that they still haven't fixed).

 

[Kingfisher]

I'm always amazed how the news media made this nothing story into something that made it sound like 1.7 million Toyota were going to explode as they drove down the road. The news people suck balls.

 

[Namreg]

the NTSB said that the accidents were most likely due to driver error since they could not find any faults in the design of the vehicle. car and driver magazine said that in their own tests the vehicle's brakes were always strong enough to overcome the acceleration force... and besides, why didn't the morons in the runaway cars simply pull the handbrake or switch off the engine?

 

[D-rock]

I have owned and driven Toyota/Lexus for the past 18 years, and have NEVER had a mechanical failure. Their post sales service is excellent as well. At least they admit when there is a problem, and do something about it. There are too many other stories from other car manufacturers who try and deny that there is a problem in the first place.

That reminds me of Ford decades ago with the Pinto in the 70s when they didn't want to fix a situation with their gas tanks where flaws in the designed of the car would make it too easy for it to get damaged in a wreck and burn everybody inside. They didn't want to fix the situation after cost/benefit analysis figured it with would be cheaper to let people die and pay off the lawsuits than to actually fix the problem and make their cars safe.

 

[georges]

I am glad none in my family owns a japanese car but only german and/or good old detroit iron made cars.

 

[D-rock]

I am glad none in my family owns a japanese car but only german and/or good old detroit iron made cars.

Detroit iron made cars? I assume that when you said "old" you meant that literally because Detroit doesn't really produce cars anymore, and certainly not ones with a lot of iron.

 

[como7170]

1.7 million cars recalled? That's a slow week for Ford or GM.

 

[Rey C.]

The Toyota Production System is what manufacturers have been looking to emulate for the past 15 years or so. The University of Kentucky even teaches a course on the system. All of the American automakers use some version of it (or parts of it), and companies outside of automotive, such as Harley Davidson and Boeing, use versions of TPS/Lean. IMO, what's going on now with Toyota is their own fault though. They ignored the warning flags built into TPS and continued with designs (or suppliers) that were known to have issues. As Akido Toyda admitted (and the NHTSA found out), internal documents clearly spelled out safety concerns. But someone within Toyota decided that it would be cheaper/better to keep going full speed ahead. My guess is Toyota has focused too heavily on expansion and building marketshare, and took its eye off the (quality) ball.

But however they got to the fix they are in now, there's no denying that Toyota has tumbled in the quality rankings at both J.D. Power and Consumer Reports. In the J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey, Toyota fell from 6th to 21st. Defects have risen from 101 defects per 100 vehicles to 117. The industry average was 109 defects per 100 vehicles in 2010 - so Toyota is now (for the first time that I can remember) worse than the industry average.

What's interesting about the 2010 J.D. Power rankings is that, while Toyota tumbled, Lexus (a Toyota brand) held steady. It ranked 4th, behind Porsche (#1), Acura and Mercedes-Benz. And Ford cracked the Top 5 for the first time in the study's 24 year history. I'm pretty much out of the loop now, but there aren't many industry people who would disagree that Alan Mulally is doing a fantastic job turning Ford around. But Toyota has some obvious structural problems.

 

[Rey C.]

I am glad none in my family owns a japanese car but only german and/or good old detroit iron made cars.

Hopefully they're Mercedes and not Volkswagens. Volkswagen is at the very bottom of the IQS rankings, only ahead of Land Rover and Mitsubishi.