When it rains it pours eh? Toyota knows how that feels these days. The company is losing money for the first time in, well, ever and it just issued it's biggest recall ever.
Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into a new Toyota problem. Actually, it's kind of an old problem of sorts. Turns out a few customers have reported issues with rust on the frame of their 2000 and 2001 Tundra pickups. It's causing their spare tires to fall out and that's not good when it's slung underneath the bed.
So far the number of complaints has been pretty small, about 15 in total, but Toyota had a similar issue with its Tacoma compact truck which forced the company to buy back affected trucks. It's not quite a full blown investigation yet, but stay tuned, there's more to come.
schildt says:
01:03 PM, 10/ 8/09
My cousin had one of those rusted out Tacoma's. It was valued at like $9,000 and they gave here (I think) 17 for it. Score!
brn says:
02:19 PM, 10/ 8/09
If it didn't have rust issues, it might have been valued at $17K...
Actually, I think I read elsewhere that they gave 1.5x the blue book value. I don't know which blue book value they used, but I bet it was a low one. I'm also serious that the blue book value would have been higher if there weren't rust issues. Your cousin probably got a fair price.
subaru123 says:
03:21 PM, 10/ 8/09
What's so surprising it's a Toyota.
zoomzoomn says:
05:56 AM, 10/10/09
Actually, problems are nothing new for Toyota. They have had alot of rather large issues. It's just that they had managed them fairly well and avoided any real tarnishing of their (I believe somewhat undeserved) platinum image. Remember the V6 engine woes from the 90's-early 00's? Rust is also not a new problem for them either.
brn says:
12:14 PM, 10/10/09
zoomzoom has a point. Throughout the 2000's, Toyota has had significant recall issues, but they've been quelled. It got so bad that the Japanese government put some Toyota executives in prison for covering it up. Japanese imports in general had massive rust issues that they really didn't work out until the early 90's.