138,000 cars in the UK have been recalled from the 1.39
million affected cars in Europe. The largest single recall since 1998 – when Ford
recalled 8 million vehicles – will see 2.47 million cars in the US and 1.4
million in China return to Toyota garages. The UK models affected are the
Auris, Corolla, RAV4 and the Yaris produced between 2005 and 2010.
Steve Settle, Customer Services
Director for Toyota GB, apologised for the anxiety caused by the recall but
reassured drivers that the fault posed little threat to road safety. "What
we're talking about is the power switch on the driver's door and there is a
very, very outside chance that there could be melting inside the switch,"
he said, "But there are some vehicle agencies around the world that
interpret melting as fire. We've no evidence of fire and our engineer testing
of this item doesn't reveal any chance of fire."
Toyota has yet to announce how much the recall will cost.
Fixing the switch problem will only take about 40 minutes. However, even with a
small problem and simple solution, this has further damaged Toyota’s reputation
as one of the largest selling car firm in the world following the 2009 recall
of their cars when reports of accelerator pedals getting stuck underneath car
mats proved a large problem. That recall affected 12 million cars in total.
Toyota was recently set back by the 2011 tsunami,
devastating production facilities in the company’s native Japan. Recent
tensions between Japan and China over a territorial dispute have also seen
plummeting sales figures in China.
The number of cars in this recall equal that of the company’s
total sales for the entirety of its last financial year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment