Toyota Motor Corp. is recalling 15,600 new Tundra large pickups because a rear driveshaft can separate and cause the wheels to stop turning, a setback in the company’s challenge to U.S. rivals’ dominance in such trucks.
The recall covers four-wheel drive versions of the 2007 Tundra, Toyota said Friday. There has been one occurrence of the problem, with no accidents or injuries, the company said.

The flaw follows an earlier announcement by Toyota that it would replace V8 engines in 20 of the 2007 trucks because of defective camshafts. The revamped Tundra also failed to win top safety scores for all model types in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tests.
Friday’s recall is “small in terms of numbers, but when you look at the number of incidents Toyota has had on the Tundra, it begins to add up,” said Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor. “Pickups are a different breed of animal. Toyota is still on a learning curve.”

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The corporate culture that has charged Toyota’s ascendance in the automotive world isn’t without its pitfalls. Pride in quality products has driven the automaker for decades and the recent spate of issues with the Tundra – from snapping camshafts, cracking tailgates and faulty torque converters – is making Toyota executives realize that exponential growth is not without its pains.

Speaking with Automotive News at the Tokyo Motor Show, ToMoCo’s global manufacturing exec admitted that problems with the automaker’s full-size pickup have caused “shame” within the company. Takeshi Uchiyamada cited the rapid expansion of Toyota’s production facilities, increased sales and issues with new products as being the major dilemmas facing the automaker, but that all these problems are being addressed. Recognizing the issue is half the battle, but time will tell whether or not Toyota’s break-neck pace will continue to hamper the Japanese firm’s growth.

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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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Toyota’s recall of 470,000 vehicles in Japan announced recently comes as the car industry’s most admired manufacturer faces a string of setbacks.

But although large, the recall is by no means massive - nor especially unusual - by industry standards. In August Ford Motor said it was recalling 3.6 million of its cars, pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles in the US due to problems with speed control deactivation switches.

These, Ford said, might “under certain conditions, leak internally and then overheat, smoke or burn”. Last month, Toyota’s two biggest Japanese rivals, Honda and Nissan, both announced much smaller vehicle recalls in the US.

Toyota last week said it was recalling its Crown saloon and some other models in Japan for engine, steering and other problems, but said there were no reports of accidents related to the defects.

Larger recalls are always embarrassing for carmakers, who have a habit of communicating the news late on Fridays in hopes they will pass with minimal notice. They also cost carmakers money and cause friction with dealers, who must make available space and time that most would rather devote to selling new vehicles.

For Toyota, which reached its leading position by selling consumers around the world reliable cars, the issue is central to its business.

In an interview with the Financial Times this year, Katsuaki Watanabe, Toyota’s president, described the company’s quality concerns as nothing less than an “emergency”.

The recall caps a rare difficult patch for Toyota, especially in the US - its biggest market - where its reputation for good quality and environmental friendliness have recently come into question.

Last week, the Consumer Reports magazine said it was dropping three Toyota vehicles, including the six-cylinder version of its Camry - America’s top-selling car - from its list of recommended vehicles on reliability concerns.

Separately, nine environmental groups are lobbying Toyota to drop its opposition to a draft fuel-economy bill approved by the Senate. The carmaker has also seen three defections of senior executives from its US operation in the last two months.

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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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Toyota Motor Corp’s China venture is recalling 21,685 locally made buses due to potential problems with the rear stabliser bar, local media said on Tuesday.

The buses were produced by Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor, the top Japanese auto maker’s venture with FAW Group, between Feb. 1, 2001, and May 31 this year, the semi-official Xinhuanet said.

It did not say whether any accidents or personal injuries had been linked to the defect.

Officials at Sichuan FAW Toyota could not immediately be reached for comment.

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