This is a crisis embattled automaker Toyota can clearly do without. In what seems to be its never-ending problems, the US government has decided to investigate the power steering of the world’s top-selling Corona cars.
There have been complaints from drivers about steering problems with the 2009-10 Toyota Corolla cars.
The Japanese auto giant said it would recall the car if there is a safety issue, lengthening the list of vehicles being called back over alleged technical and mechanical faults.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had received some 150 online complaints, said its inquiry will cover about 500,000 Toyotas of 2009 and 2010, a source said.
“When driving on the highway (60+ mph), the vehicle will all of a sudden start to wander back and forth in the lane, for a few hundred yards,” reads a complaint about a 2010 Corolla received by NHTSA. “Then as quickly as it started, it stops.
The wandering has almost created four collisions so far.”
A Corolla recall would add to a repair list of more than 8 million vehicles on five continents spanning models from the Camry sedan to the Prius hybrid.
Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, has lost more than $31 billion in market value since announcing fixes for accelerator-pedal defects on Jan. 21.
To repair the damage to its image, the company placed advertisements in Japanese newspapers apologizing and promising to complete repairs as soon as possible.
The automaker has set up a global quality committee, headed by Toyota President Akio Toyoda, and will appoint a chief quality officer at each of the company’s regions. Toyoda said at a press conference in Tokyo that the new committee would have its first meeting on March 30. The company will also appoint a third party to test its electronic throttle system.
So far, Toyota has recalled 7.86 million vehicles worldwide since last fall, mostly in the United States. The recalls focus on unintended acceleration and braking complaints.
Toyoda said that the company would add a brake-override system to all future vehicles that cuts engine power when the accelerator and brake pedals are depressed at the same time, which the company hopes will halt unintended acceleration.