No Mas, No Mas: Toyota Hybrids Recalled; Corolla Steering Investigation Considered

The Tacoma seems to be a-okay.

Dame mas, dame mas! LOL

I'm getting tired of Toyota claiming these things are voluntary. They claim voluntary on all the recalls. They claim they voluntarily stopped selling the unfixed vehicles. They didn't have a choice. They had to be beaten into performing these actions. Calling them voluntary is a farce.

Wow!

Next major recall will be with Tundra...the engine will catch fire if you drive it too hard LoL.

Doesn't the Toyota symbol look like a hanging noose around the necks of all their customers, it really sucks to be them right now!

WTH...seriously. What's next? A recall because sometimes the seatbelt comes loose if you don't properly put it on?

"has been the subject of 83 power-steering complaints since April 2008, "

I wonder how many complaints they get in total in a 2 year period? Is 83 a significant number? Were they investigated and found to be legitimate?

While I'm not a Toyota driver I'm still smelling a witchhunt here.

Everyday I tell myself, "darn, too late to short sell Toyota's stock." And everyday Toyota proves to me otherwise.

I remember a few years back that the Prius had an engine stall issue on steep hills. I'm betting that's the next biggie.

No, it's just the typical disregard Japanese manufacturers have for admitting the flaws of their vehicles. When U.S. companies try this, they are vilified, when Japanese companies do this they blame operator error. That's what we did 50 years ago, but not today.

Owners of Japanese cars claim their cars are more reliable because they have lower standards- if you were to sell a Subaru as a Ford, most owners would consider, unreliable, and poorly made.

Actually owners of Japanese cars claim they are more reliable because they've owned American cars that were crap and then switched to Japanese. Their standards are higher, not lower.

For decades people just assumed cars fall apart after a few years. Then the Japanese cars showed up and you could drive them for many, many years and several hundred thousand miles with little going wrong. It was a huge change.

American car companies have gone to great lengths to catch up and in some cases they have.

However the Japanese earned their reputation for reliability first.

Yeah, that might've been true in the 70's and 80's, but today it's the reverse. Honda has yet to build a reliable automatic transmission, but Ford had a 6 year run of a bad 4 Speed Auto in the mid 90's and suffers a bad rep from it today. Toyota engines all sludge worse than Chrysler's did, but it was Chrysler's rep who suffered despite selling only a fraction as many vehicles with defective engines. Honda's hybrids can't even pass the EPA long-term test because they're so unreliable- no domestic product has *ever* earned that distinction. Subaru engines are long famous for blowing head gaskets and eating wheel bearings- something GM was sued for but Subaru keeps denying- even denying warranty coverage! (GM at least repaired theirs while under warranty!)

"Honda has yet to build a reliable automatic transmission"

I've heard everything from 2005 on has been very reliable.

" Ford had a 6 year run of a bad 4 Speed Auto in the mid 90's and suffers a bad rep from it today."

Because they were connected to bad engines too. Everyone I knew with a 3.8 had it fail.

"Subaru engines are long famous for blowing head gaskets and eating wheel bearings- "

Subaru's 2.5 from 1996 to 2000 was known for blowing headgaskets. Even out of warranty I know people that had them changed without charge though. I don't know about wheel bearings, my Legacy went 19 years on the original bearings.

GM 3.8 series2 V6 suffered from intake manifold failure in countless cars due to a bad design. GM flatly refused to admit the problem for ages. The 60 deg V6 (3.1 and 3.4) had constant head gasket issues which they also refused to acknowledge.

It's easy to find a problem with any make of car. Name a car and I'll bet I know someone who has had trouble with one. The big difference is the number of problems and Japanese cars historically have had a lot less problems.

Of course I'm speaking of the past because the present is only what you are thinking now and the future hasn't been written yet.

My guess now is all cars are so reliable (except maybe Nissans) that you will have look at them over a 20 year life span to try to find a difference... and that includes Japanese brands.

What really annoys me are all the people who are saying they always buy Toyotas because they're reliable, and will continue buying them no matter what, because they're always reliable. Well with that kind of attitude I'd blame Toyota if they bothered to spend any money on quality. They have a huge market of complete tools who will make excuses for them all day long and consider anything they put out to be reliable without looking at the facts. What do you expect would happen?

stovt001 is correct. Toyota's commercials in recent years indicated a substantial amount of arrogance. They were actually trying to introduce a kind of blind faith in Toyota's reliability. How dare you question it?

That usually comes back to bite you in the end.

@Stovt001 : I agree as well, I remember the Ad showing the two men each getting into their trucks (a Ford and a Tundra) and the Ford not starting. And it turns out now that Toyota can't back up their quality claims.

@Firstwagon: I owned a last-gen Forester that ate through both Wheel Bearings and Head Gaskets before the original powertrain warranty was up. Prior to that I had a GM with a known Head Gasket issue. Neither company admitted defects to their work, the only difference is the GM car made it to 100,000 miles, the Subaru failed twice before 60. If you ever think Subarus are reliable, visit a dealer and scratch your head at the always-full service lot. But then again if you think Suzukis (which last on this planet slightly longer than the dealers who sell them) are a 'reliable transportation' then there you go...

firstwagon: "Because they were connected to bad engines too. Everyone I knew with a 3.8 had it fail."

That's funny. I've never known anyone who had a 3.8 fail.

So much for anecdotal evidence.

brn

I guess you didn't know many Windstar or Taurus owners. It's common knowledge.

i.e.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Windstar

"Throughout its life, the Windstar developed a long list of reliability issues. The 1995 3.8 L V6 Essex engine was susceptible to headgasket failure, as in the Taurus and Mercury Sable; however, the Windstar's problem was exacerbated by an even tighter engine bay and higher loads, the van being 700 pounds heavier."

http://www.coolcats.net/tech/troubleshooting/gaskets.html

"Especially on the Ford 3.8L V6 (all years), the head gaskets are very prone to failure because all 3.8L heads are made of aluminum, and aluminum and cast iron engine blocks don't exactly mate up very well. Basic chemistry---two unlike materials expanding at different rates can cause incompatibilities. So the pressure then, literally, is on the factory head gaskets to keep these two materials in line with each other."

@BRN: I think you're thinking of a different Ford engine or the Duratec 3.0L engine (which from my own experience is a 200k+ mile engine.) The Windstar's engine lasted about as long as its Toyota counterparts.