Japanese automobile major Toyota Motor Corp on Wednesday recalled 6.39 million vehicles globally over a string of problems, dealing another blow to the world’s largest automaker.
In India, Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) will recall nearly 45,000 units of their flagship utility vehicle, Innova after the company discovered an error in the spiral cable mounted on the steering wheel.
Already under pressure due to the strike by their permanent grade-8 employees, the latest developments not helping the car makers plight.
The company announced that they will recall 44,989 units of Innova models manufactured between February 2005 and December 2008.
“This (error) will lead to continuous illumination of an airbag warning lamp on the instrument cluster giving prior indication of a problem to the customer. In addition, the driver’s airbag may get deactivated,” TKM said.
Barely a day earlier, it was reported that passenger car major, Maruti is likely to recall around 1 lakh units of their mid-size car, Dzire to replace a faulty fuel neck filler.
“Toyota is currently working on obtaining the necessary replacement parts. Once the replacement parts are available, customers will be contacted by the authorised Toyota dealers. The vehicle will then be repaired free of cost,” TKM said.
Despite record sales and bumper profits, Toyota has been fighting to protect its brand after earlier recalls involving millions of vehicles.
Last month it reached a deal to pay $1.2 billion to settle US criminal charges that it covered up a sticky pedal blamed for dozens of deaths.
Among the problems are an airbag issue, a driver’s seat defect, steering column problems and an engine starter glitch that posed a fire risk.
The company issued five recalls involving 26 Toyota models, as well as the Pontiac Vibe and the Subaru Trezia, with some models affected by more than one recall.
The Vibe, based on Toyota’s Matrix model, was produced at a US factory which was jointly owned by the Japanese automaker and GM. The Trezia is a rebadged version of Toyota’s Ractis subcompact.
The vehicles were made over the past decade.