Toyota Motor Corp. plans to fix accelerator pedals on about 4 million vehicles in its biggest U.S. recall, as the automaker works to fulfill its president’s vow to “make better cars.”
The Japanese company also will install a brake override system on some of the vehicles after drivers reported cases of sudden acceleration, the U.S. Transportation Department said yesterday. The recall covers Toyota’s top-selling Camry as well as its Lexus and Prius cars and Tacoma and Tundra trucks.
Toyota’s recall, at least the third covering more than 100,000 U.S. autos in the past two years, dents a reputation for vehicle quality established in surveys such as those by researcher J.D. Power & Associates. Toyota wrested the global sales crown from General Motors Co. in 2008.
“They’ve wanted to be the world’s biggest automaker, and that kind of expansion over the past 20 years has really come back to bite them,” said Aaron Bragman, a product analyst at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Troy, Michigan. “It’s no longer an isolated issue here or there.”
The recalls add to the strain of slumping sales brought on by a recession. The Toyota City, Japan-based automaker’s U.S. sales fell 26 percent in the first 10 months of the year.
“We have to listen to our customers and make better cars,” President Akio Toyoda said in a speech to journalists in Tokyo Oct. 2. The grandson of Toyota’s founder became president this year.
Tundra Recall
Toyota said Nov. 24 it was recalling 110,000 Tundra pickups for frame corrosion that can damage brake lines and dislodge spare tires. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Transportation Department, had started investigating the flaw.
“The frame issue with the Tundra and Tacoma is an obvious defect,” Bragman said. The “unintended acceleration issue is far more nebulous however. Given the court of public opinion, Toyota has to respond.”
In April 2008, Toyota recalled 539,500 of its 2003 and 2004 model-year Corolla and Matrix cars to fix a flaw that could cause the power windows to stop working. In August of this year, it recalled 95,700 of the 2009 and 2010 model-year Corolla, Matrix and Scion xD vehicles for a defect that could cause brakes to fail in cold conditions.
Toyota’s biggest previous recall worldwide involved 1.53 million Hilux pickup trucks with faulty steering relay rods. The recall began in Japan in 2004 and was extended to overseas markets in 2005. The company’s largest U.S. recall before this year involved 978,000 vehicles in 2005, also to fix a steering- related flaw.
California Deaths
The U.S.-built Camry is the market’s best-selling passenger car, and the Prius is the world’s most popular hybrid-electric model based on sales volume.
Toyota plans to shorten the accelerator pedals and in some vehicles will reshape the floor surface under the pedal, Irv Miller, a group vice president for the company’s U.S. sales unit in Torrance, California, said yesterday on a conference call with reporters. Toyota declined to estimate the cost of the actions.
The automaker told U.S. dealers in September to inspect how floor mats were installed after a California Highway Patrol officer and three family members died in a crash near San Diego in a Lexus that may have had a jammed accelerator.
Root Cause
Toyota said in a statement yesterday that it was taking the steps “to address the root cause of the potential risk for floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedals.” The company will develop replacement pedals that will be available for certain models by April. Vehicles that are repaired sooner may still get the new pedals when they are ready.
The company is “grasping for salvation” as it predicts a second straight annual loss, Toyoda, the company’s president, said last month.
While the repairs won’t have much effect on Toyota’s earnings, “what you’re worried more about is obviously liabilities,” such as class-action consumer lawsuits, said Kurt Sanger, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at Deutsche Securities Inc.
The traffic safety agency had advised owners of the affected Toyota and Lexus vehicles in October to remove floor mats to reduce the risk of accelerator pedals jamming in the down position.
Cutting the Pedal
The models involved in the recall are the 2007 to 2010 model-year Camry sedans; 2005 to 2010 Avalon sedans; 2004 to 2009 Prius hybrids; 2005 to 2010 Tacoma pickups; 2007 to 2010 Tundra pickups; and Lexus’s 2007 to 2010 ES 350, 2006 to 2010 IS 250 and 2006 to 2010 IS 350 sedans.
The number of recalled vehicles increased from the 3.8 million announced in October because of additional vehicles sold since then, Miller said yesterday.
Toyota dealers will be instructed how to cut the accelerator pedals to shorten them, Mike Michaels, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. sales unit, said. The pedal will be reduced by about three-fourths of an inch in the case of affected Camry and Avalon models, and redesigned pedals will have the same dimensions, he said.
The brake override system for some models would stop the car if the brake and accelerator are depressed at the same time, as would occur if a driver attempted to halt a vehicle with a stuck accelerator.
