Toyota said on Wednesday it was recalling more than 470,000 vehicles in Japan in its fifth recall this year, highlighting the carmaker’s struggle to deal with quality problems as it expands globally.
The move brings the total number of vehicles the carmaker has had to recall in Japan this year to more than 594,000. It comes after Toyota suffered a blow in the US when Consumer Reports, the influential consumer-advice publication, said it was reversing a practice of automatically recommending all new Toyota cars.
Toyota ranked third behind Honda and Subaru in reliability and two Toyota models had “below average” predicted reliability, Consumer Reports said.
“Consumer Reports will no longer recommend any new or redesigned Toyota-built models without reliability data on a specific design,” said the magazine, which is extremely influential with US car buyers.
The latest recall is for various models, including the Crown luxury sedan, made in Japan between September 1999 and October 2004, and the specific problems include fuel pumps, fuel control and steering, according to Reuters.
The damage to Toyota’s reputation for quality follows a difficult period for the group, which is poised this year to overtake General Motors as the world’s largest carmaker.
Recalls in Japan and the US, two of its most important markets, have totalled 1.18m this year.
Last year, when Toyota recalled 2.1m vehicles in the US and Japan, it was ordered by the Japanese government to reduce the number of defects in its cars.
In 2005, Toyota was forced to recall as many as 2.29m cars in the US and more than 1.88m vehicles in Japan, leading the carmaker to set up an emergency task force to improve its quality track record, under the direct leadership of its president, Katsuaki Watanabe.
Since then, recall numbers have been on the decline and Toyota has said it has addressed most of the problems.
However, “it seems, they have not addressed their problems 100 per cent”, said Koji Endo, auto analyst at Credit Suisse in Tokyo. “I don’t think Toyota’s quality has declined.” Half of the top 20-30 cars rated by Consumer Reports are still Toyota cars, he said.
The group is adding 600,000 units of capacity in North America, or more than some companies have as their total output and about a quarter of the entire global car market’s annual expansion.
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Tags: Toyota, Toyota recall, General Motors, GM, Honda, Subaru, Crown luxury sedan
Categories: Toyota, Vehicle Recall News
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