Toyota Motor Corp will recall 8,000 pickups due to possible cracks in a common drive shaft component that Ford Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd said posed no safety risk to their vehicles.
Toyota’s decision to recall the this year’s model Tacoma pickup trucks in the US, which it announced on Friday, was the latest in a series of recalls that have hurt the automaker’s sales and its reputation for quality.
The Toyota recall followed supplier Dana Holding Corp’s report to US safety regulators that 34,000 drive shaft components it supplied to Toyota, Ford and Nissan could have cracks.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Dana said it was investigating the cause of the problem and remedies would be specific to each vehicle on which the parts are used. It believed less than 2 percent of the parts shipped to the automakers had cracks.
About 17,000 of the parts were supplied to Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner car-based SUVs and a review found no potential impact on the vehicles, Ford spokesman Said Deep said.
“Our rigorous testing and review concluded there are no safety or performance issues,” Deep said.
The parts were supplied for a small number of this year’s model four-wheel drive Nissan and Infiniti trucks and SUVs, Nissan said.
The vehicles “will not experience a loss of control or present a safety risk even in the unlikely event the part should fail,” Nissan spokesman Colin Price said in a statement.
Toyota said in a document obtained by reporters that the all-wheel drive version of the 2010 Tacoma trucks might have a component containing cracks in the joint portion of the drive shaft due to an “improper manufacturing process control.”
The cracks eventually could cause the drive shaft to separate and strike the road surface, potentially causing drivers to lose control of the vehicle, the document showed.
Toyota said in the document the pickups were built from mid-December to early this month.
It told the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of its planned recall on Thursday and was not aware of any accidents caused by the defect.
Toyota’s latest move follows a string of recalls in recent months that cover more than 8.5 million vehicles globally due to the risk that a loose floormat or a sticky accelerator pedal may lead to unintended acceleration, and to resolve a problem with regenerative braking on its Prius hybrid car.
VOLKSWAGEN
Meanwhile, German automaker Volkswagen said on Friday it was recalling some 20,000 cars in Mexico, a day after it announced the recall of nearly 200,000 cars in Brazil over potential wheel malfunctions.
The company said the recall in Mexico had been ordered over the “possibility that the rear wheel bearings could be insufficiently lubricated, causing then to make noise.”
“If the situation is not addressed, it could cause the wheel bearings to lock,” the company said in a statement released by its Puebla factory.
The company said it was recalling “approximately 20,000 cars,” all of them Gol and Gol Sedan models, the statement said.
A day earlier, the company said it was recalling nearly 200,000 of its Novo Gol and Voyage model cars in Brazil over the same issue.
Volkswagen Brazil said on its Web site that 193,620 Novo Gol and Voyage cars were at risk of not having sufficient lubrication on its rear wheels, which “can cause noise and continuous use could lead to a blockage of the wheels.”
“In extreme cases, the wheel can come off,” it said.
Volkswagen also said on Friday that its global sales were up more than 40 percent on the year last month, powered by strong demand in China.
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