Toyota Motor Co. said Tuesday it would cover the costs of repairing doors on up to 600,000 Sienna minivans, after learning from consumers that a part can fail, causing doors to shut unexpectedly.
It’s not a factory recall for the vehicles, made from 2004 through 2006, but the owners will receive a letter from Toyota explaining the problem and offering to take care of it at the company’s expense.
The letters will be mailed Nov. 2, Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong told the Journal Sentinel.
In Wauwatosa, Tom Osman spent about six months trying to get Toyota, or his local dealership, to pay for the failed door mechanism on his 2005 Sienna.
At best, it was going to cover only 75% of the $2,000 repair bill, Osman said, leaving him to pay the $500 difference.
That was just for one door, on the driver’s side, which must be replaced because the “door check mounting panel” failed.
“It’s probably a matter of time before the passenger door fails too,” Osman said.
The problem is with the front doors on the driver’s and passenger’s sides, rather than the van’s sliding doors. When the door is open, it’s supposed to be held in place by the door check mounting panel. When the part fails, the door swings freely.
With two children, ages 4 and 7, Osman said he worries that one of the doors will close on their hands while they’re getting out of the vehicle.
Osman was angry that until Tuesday Toyota said it would not cover the full repair costs, because his van had 40,000 miles on the odometer and was out of warranty, even though it was less than three years old.
“This was a factory defect. It should have nothing to do with the warranty,” Osman said.
Toyota had been handling the out-of-warranty complaints on a “case by case” basis, said Mary Doherty, customer relations manager at Wilde Toyota, in West Allis. Osman bought the vehicle used from Wilde.
If the vehicles were under Toyota’s three-year, 36,000-mile warranty, the repairs were fully covered, she said.
It’s difficult to say whether the Sienna door problem is widespread, partly because it might not surface for years on some vehicles.
But Toyota now says it will pay for the repairs on Siennas up to five years old with 100,000 or fewer miles on them.
“We are calling it a warranty enhancement,” rather than a factory recall, Kwong said.
The defect was caused by bad spot welds. Siennas are built at the company’s factory in Princeton, Ind. Toyota doesn’t consider the defect a safety issue, although a door that closes unexpectedly could be hazardous to small children.
“Most of the time, people are just annoyed by a ‘popping noise’ they hear” when the welds are weak, Kwong said.
The faulty part is the latest in a string of problems that have raised doubts about whether Toyota can maintain quality standards amid booming sales.
Last week, Consumer Reports said Toyota had fallen so far in its annual vehicle reliability survey that it could no longer automatically recommend the company’s new cars and trucks to readers.
Toyota slid from first place last year to fifth place in Consumer Reports’ 2007 rankings. Honda replaced Toyota in the No. 1 spot.
In 2005, Toyota had 12 recalls totaling more than 2 million vehicles. One of those involved nearly a million vehicles built as far back as 1989. A recall of more than 768,000 involved trucks and sport utility vehicles no older than three years.
Toyota hasn’t issued a factory recall for the Sienna door problem, perhaps because such notices generate a lot of negative publicity, said Joe Wiesenfelder with Cars.com, a Web site for car enthusiasts.
“It’s probably on the cusp of being a recall, but maybe not,” he said.
Still, Toyota is probably more sensitive to Sienna owners’ complaints now, given the Consumer Reports rankings, according to Wiesenfelder.
“Anyone who pays the kind of money we’re talking about here, especially with a company of Toyota’s reputation, is justified in feeling outraged,” he said.
Toyota is offering to reimburse consumers who have already paid up to several thousand dollars to have their Sienna doors fixed.
If the bad welds are broken or cracked, the entire door assembly has to be replaced at a cost of several thousand dollars.
“You don’t have to be the vehicle’s original owner. Anyone can bring the car in and it will be fixed,” Kwong said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received a few complaints about the problem. Earlier this year, Toyota issued a service bulletin to its dealerships advising them of the necessary repairs.
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Tags: Toyota Motor Co, Toyota, Toyota recall, Sienna, Sienna recall, minivan, minivan recall
Categories: Toyota, Vehicle Recall News
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