The Toyota Recall

I had our Toyota Verso serviced today. Both our cars are now Toyotas. They're not exactly the most exciting vehicles to look at but they have an unpretentious utilitarian feel about them, they are well built, generally reliable, remarkably efficient and I like the local dealership - actually the longest established Toyota dealer in the UK - who get most things sorted easily and with as little pain to myself as possible.

I was a bit concerned about the recall which has been all over the press lately but when I checked at the dealers it doesn't affect either car. I've had to have a couple of recalls done over the last few years. One issue was a possible fire risk and the other for a potential brake failure. These were actually on my Hondas - one UK and one Japanese built. These also have to rate as the most reliable cars I've ever had - over the seven years of ownership not a single thing went wrong - but, as with any vehicle, problems may come to light affecting the vehicle safety which have to be remedied. You can check for recalls via the VOSA website, and for an example take the current version of Britain's top selling model, the Ford Focus:

R/2006/092: engine may fail
R/2007/133: in low ambient temperature hard brake pedal may occur
R/2007/169: roll over protection may fail
R/2008/001: electronic cooling fan control module may fail
R/2008/045: rear hub bolt may become loose
R/2008/113: failure of power steering hose could result in an engine bay fire
R/2009/016: risk of fire
R/2009/050: hard brake pedal may occur during engine warm up

That's quite a list - and this is for a car that I regard as well made, safe and reliable. I have driven one, I would drive one again and happily own one if it suited my needs. So what makes Toyota different? It's not the problem as such which is a fairly run-of-the-mill safety recall and would mainly affect very high mileage cars. I asked the dealer what the issue was and the service manager said that the initial problem would be an engine overrun due to the throttle not releasing quickly enough - anyone who has driven a carburettor engined car will probably have experienced this at some point. If not remedied it would gradually get worse. On a scale of 1-10 of safety concerns it's probably a 3 or 4 - certainly nowhere near a brake or steering failure, a tyre blow-out or engine bay fire.

From what I can gather the furore stems from an incident in which a Lexus model was loaned to a driver in the US as a courtesy car. The vehicle had rubber mats fitted from the wrong model and jammed the accelerator pedal full on. This is serious but recoverable by braking, shifting to neutral or switching the engine off. However, the driver panicked and the car crashed killing its occupants. Toyota issued a warning and recall over the mats and it appears subsequent problems have become muddled in the public's mind (plus very poor reporting of the issues in the media).

The media, in fact, have been reporting all sorts of cases without checking any facts at all. Many of the incidents reported are for vehicles unaffected by any of the issues. So now every crackpot is recanting nightmare stories which are nothing to do with the vehicles and very much to do with owners who are either inept, attention seeking Münchausen's syndrome cases, unscrupulous lawyers or their corrupt clients. Amongst this there will be some people who genuinely do have mechanical issues with their vehicles. If a problem can be detected that's easy enough to deal with but, as the service manager at our local dealers pointed out - they can't really prove a negative. As for Toyota, it may end up as an inverse Ford Pinto case where they settle out of court as being a more cost effective than proving the drivers are blithering idiots or lunatics.

I don't think any of this would put me off Toyota. They have acted in a sensible and conscientious manner as one would expect from a major manufacturer but, given the PR disaster, I suspect that any future recalls will be done quietly via the DVLA.