Toyota announced it would recall 6.39 million vehicles worldwide for various faults in what is the company’s second-largest recall to date. No less than 27 Toyota models are affected, including RAV4 and Yaris, as well as two models Toyota has built or still makes for other automakers – the Pontiac Vibe and Subaru Trezia.
More than 1 million of the recalled vehicles are in Japan, including 919,654 Vitz cars, 146,678 RAV4 SUVs and 19,151 Porte vans.
Some 3.5 million vehicles are being recalled to replace a spiral cable that could be damaged when the steering wheel is turned, causing the air bag to fail to deploy in the event of a crash. Roughly, half of those vehicles, built between April 2004 and December 2010, are in North America.
About 2.32 million three-door models built between January 2005 and August 2010 are also being recalled to check the rails that could cause the seat to slide forward in a crash. The rest of the recalled cars (approximately 570,000 vehicles) present faulty steering column brackets, windshield wiper motors and engine starters.
Toyota said it is not aware of any crashes or injuries caused by the glitches, which range from steering to seats. The company didn’t say whether the faults were caused by suppliers or its own manufacturing process and failed to announce how much the recall would cost. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and concern brought by this recall announcement,” Toyota said in a statement.
This recall is the largest announced on single day for Toyota since October 2012, when the Japanese automaker recalled 7.43 million Yaris, Corolla and other models to fix faulty power window switches.
By Dan Mihalascu
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