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  1. Toyota, a brand that is highly regarded for its top notch build quality in the past, has issued two massive recalls involving nearly 1 million Corollas and over 300,000 Lexus IS models. These add to a long list of recalls that have plagued the Japanese carmaker in recent years. The Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles affected are built between December 2001 and May 2004. Most of these defective cars are located in the U.S. For the problematic Lexus IS models, they are manufactured from May 2005 to October 2011. According to Toyota, the airbag control modules in these Corollas are susceptible to internal shorting, which can cause the frontal airbags to inadvertently deploy. For the Lexus IS, the wiper arm nuts might not be tightened sufficiently and in the event of heavy snow buildup on the windshield, one or both of the wipers could malfunction - fortunately, it does not snow in Singapore. Toyota has just regained its top spot in the 2012 global sales chart from General Motors. Such bad publicity might jeopardize their chance of retaining that spot in 2013.
  2. Ahah! After many finger pointing, throwing of accusations, requests of public apologies and other witch hunts, it seems that Toyota cars may not the culprit in the totally blown out of proportion sticking accelerator pedal fiasco. Over the past twelve months or so Toyota have been recalling up to 10million or so of their cars due to supposed safety defects that caused some Toyota cars to accelerate out of control. It is now being concluded that driver error may have been a cause for many of the incidents. The United States National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) has now stated that data recorders showed that the brakes may not have been applied by the driver in 35 of the 58 incidents. In 9 of the cases, the NHTSA explained to the United States Congress that the brakes were applied very late and any car would not have been able to stop in time. In one other case, both the brake and accelerator pedals were pressed at the same time. It could show that big feet may be the cause for this. In a panic situation the driver may have stomped blindly and pressed either the wrong pedal, or both pedals. Well, Americans do have a lot of people wearing size 11s out there. Whatever the reason, it could now be seen that Toyota may have been very wrongly accused. Even with their admission of design flaws, it may actually be a conspiracy against them. We all know that when all heck broke loose, Toyota had just overtaken General Motors taking the number one car manufacturer slot. A weak American economy, loss of jobs at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler may have actually caused sinister game plans to come into play. Much like the BlackBerry issue right now where Saudi Arabia, UAE and maybe India deciding to ban the phone's key messenger services. With 500,000-1,000,000 users of the service in those countries, you could tell that security issues aside, many phone companies would benefit from a BlackBerry ban. The NHTSA has also stated that this is still an 'early stage' of the investigation and it will not be drawing to any conclusions from this report. These findings will however form one part of the United States government to get to the bottom of the 'unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. Whatever the real reason may be, Toyota seems to have managed to survive all the recall and reputation issues. They have actually declared a US$2.23billion nett profit based on their financial year ended 31st March 2010. While they declared slight loss of profit in areas where the recall issue affected them the most (America, Europe), the other areas had recorded growth in sales and this had balanced the books in the end. Imagine making so much profit from a net loss of over US$500million in the previous fiscal year. Some comeback, like nothing actually happened. If this were really a conspiracy by a few other companies trying to undermine Toyota, they've failed. Big Time. But lets keep our eyes and ears wide open and see what's going to happen next. Remember the NHTSA stated that the investigation is still ongoing.
  3. - The O/S system in this crashes occasionally...could the MMI system in our cars do the same occasionally too? Recently we've read or heard that Toyotas and Hondas are being recalled for faulty electronic parts and this as well as that, but all the problems reported by Toyota and Honda are happening in America and nowhere else. This actual debacle could actually be caused by 'patriotic' Americans who do not want to see any Japanese company cause American cars companies to close shop. So they create issue after issue till the sales of Japanese cars drop and the American public will resort to buying American metal (or sometimes called junk) again. Conspiracy or not, I think I have to tell you readers out there that cars nowadays are now as unpredictable as they once were in the early 1900s and that we're entering another dark age of automobiles due to electronics and technology. In those days people were upgrading from horses to automobiles. Almost everything didn't work out right. They tried steam engines which were bulky, cumbersome and especially unreliable. And these horseless carriages took over one whole minute to start. Then the inventors tried the internal combustion engine and found out that this was the way to go. But starting the car was a hassle as in the early days, cars had no starter motor. It was like witchcraft. Or like when you called the rain maker to call for rain. You prayed, did some mumbo jumbo ritual and then pray some more so that your car would start when you turned the hand crank. This would basically happen every time you wanted to go somewhere and improper cranking could result in the engine backfiring, and would turn the hand crank the other way. If you weren't careful, your arm could be broken by this. The ride was also horrid on those spindly tires and before the 1930s there was no standardization of the transmission, meaning you had to operate the gears in unfathomable ways or the Force in order to get at the controls. If you've ever witnessed or seen a video of someone giving instructions on how to change gears on a Ford Model T you'd know what I mean. But nowadays, a hundred years after having suffered from problems of early automobiles we're having another round of unpredictability due to electronics. Look at the debacle Toyota landed themselves into with their drive by wire throttle/accelerator combo. I sometimes wonder how can we trust electronics in taking over most of the functions in our cars. The accelerator pedal is now drive by wire, the climate control electronic, the seat adjustment by electric motors and now there are electronic sensors that supposedly keeps the cars in lane, detecting drowsiness and detecting sudden braking by the cars up front. And we are supposed to trust in all these electronic gizmos? How can I feel secure in putting my hands into driver assisting electronics if Toyota recently recalls their cars over their stuck throttle pedal issue or that Honda over faulty power window controls (that may turn the Honda driver into a flambe) regardless whether the fault is true or made up? What makes you think that the lane assist system in your Teutonic vehicle wouldn't take a short holiday due to some electronic glitch? Or that the USB interface in your car decided that it suddenly refused to open the IPod as it hates playing Barry Manilow. The cars being recalled are basically doing personal computer favourite, which is crash and hang up the whole system. Even to this day our laptops or desktops with will occasionally fail to do what we want it to do. Even the 5 month old notebook I use had recently crashed. You see, our personal computers crash occasionally and this would mean that our electronic gizmo filled cars would obviously do the same too. And that is what's happening to Toyotas, Hondas and a few other manufacturers nowadays. Maybe when we realize this fact, we would either: - ignore such electronic faults, keep buying the cars and pray that there's no recalls for the model you bought; or - decide to return to the stone age and build everything without electronic gadgets except for electronic fuel injection which does not seem to fail most of the time; or - expect car manufacturers to build cars like aircraft, with two or three backup units for every single electronic item. Aircraft systems are sometimes be quadruplexed (four independent channels) in order to prevent loss of signals in the case of failure of one or even two channels. This is so they don't crash every time there is a system failure. So could it be possible for car manufacturers to build a fail safe backup into each car like in an airplane? They could. But then they would pass the buck back to the customers. Obviously the customers still bear the brunt of all additional costs. Furthermore I do not think consumers would be willing to stop buying cars with all the newer creature comforts. So it would be confirmed that electronics are here to stay. So it's either car owners end up hurt, panic stricken, or end up quite dead trying to stop a faulty car with tons of electronics that do not work; or end up paying for a car that costs more as it has additional fail safes in their cars so that it will ensure that they don't wake up very dead after an accident brought about by some electronic problem. Its a win-win situation for car manufacturers isn't it? - Back-up systems in this aircraft make it safe to fly. Back-up systems in our cars? Cheaply?
  4. Aren't you guys glad Singapore practices the COE and car scrapping? There is a recent automobile recall dated 23rd February 2010 by the United States of America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) affecting the 1990-1992 Daihatsu Rocky (NHSTA report 10V083000) . It seems that the NHTSA was the main fact finder in Toyota's recall issue and not even a nearly two decade year old Daihatsu can escape scrutiny. Nothing escapes the long arm of the NHSTA. The Daihatsu Rocky's reason for a recall is that the check valve in the fuel vapor evaporation emission control system might develop a crack in long-term vehicle usage due to insufficient durability under some environmental or operational circumstances. The consequence could be a leak of fuel evaporation gas vapor into the vehicle which may result in a fire. Daihatsu would now have to replace the old check valve with a new check valve of improved construction. As expected, the service will be performed free of charge starting in March 2010. According to NHTSA, about 4,000 units of the Rocky are affected by the recall exercise. Now because tracking down affected Daihatsu owners is pretty complicated given the fact that the cars were produced 17 or 18 years ago, and many may have changed hands, scrapped, destroyed, totaled, stolen or even as per the recall issue, burnt by fire throughout the years. I doubt there are any Daihatsu Rockys left in Singapore especially with the COE and vehicle scrapping schemes. Add the fact that this small 4X4 isn't a collectible car like some 1990s sports cars it surely must be an extinct species already. Never have I read anywhere that the Rocky will be a future classic. The FJ40 Toyota Land Cruiser maybe worth saving but definitely not a Rocky. Of course there are some still running around in Malaysia, but I have not heard of Rocky users reporting their Rockys turning into a pile of molten metal over the last 15 years. What will surface next? Ford recalling the Model T from 1924-1925? I have to assume that everyone is getting worked up over Toyota's recall issues. We are now witnessing a recall frenzy nowadays folks. The floodgates are wide open.
  5. - the Unclemobile that has been in the limelight due to faulty accelerator pedals in left hand drive form. Today I was bored. I came home from my day job, made myself a cup of tea as usual, ate dinner with the family and decided that I would write something that would basically bore the heck out of me on a regular day. But since I was already feeling bored, writing about a company like Toyota couldn't make the day any duller. Toyota is currently reeling from the blows it had sustained from all the recalls it had to make from faulty accelerator pedals that have purportedly killed a lot of people, mainly Americans. It has learned that in its relentless quest to be the world's number one car manufacturer it has slackened on its quality and safety of its products. Things have basically gotten so out of hand that Toyota's head honcho Akio Toyota had to stand in front of the American Congress and apologize for all the damage done. And there is a whole lot of damage that had been done aside from the important fact that some lives had been lost. In terms of monetary damage, thousands of jobs are in jeopardy as people building and selling Toyota cars would suffer. As Toyota has a few factories in America, Europe and China, where a majority of the recalls have happened, the economies in these countries would be somewhat affected. Actually this is nothing new as everyone knows things like this would happen if a major accident or event occurs. Imagine this as another economic tsunami, we've just experienced the effects of the American credit crunch that had collapsed a lot of financial houses in America as well as in Europe and we had experienced a dot com crash in the late 1990s and the Asian financial crisis during the same period. Economic crisis' like these happens; sometimes the cause is a lack of money, manipulation of money, overinflated reporting and so forth. What is happening to Toyota is part of a vicious circle that shouldn't be taken seriously as its part of the cycle of world economics. Of course Toyota will recover, slowly but surely. But for the sake of an argument; if you are a motoring enthusiast would the death of Toyota affect you? I would be more concerned about losing Toyota when it comes to 4X4 vehicles, as the Toyota Land Cruiser and the Hilux are important vehicles with fantastic off road capability. Both 4x4s are super reliable, hardly breaks down and have good off road ability, better than other 4x4s, bar the Land Rover Defender in my opinion. If Toyota were to close down, I would be disappointed as their 4x4s are fabulous machines. But those are their off road vehicles, what about their current batch of road vehicles? Lets picture a world without Toyota at this point of time ( February 2010). Lexus is considered a separate entity for the sake of this argument and is not affected. This would mean no Vios, Corolla, Camry, Prius, Land Cruiser and Hilux. The Vios and Corolla look like a shrunken Camry (or the ultimate Unclemobile) with some youngish styling touches here and there. But if you went out and bought a Nissan Latio or a Nissan that sounds like Venereal Disease your motoring life would be still similar if you bought the Toyotas mentioned above. There wouldn't be a real difference as the Nissans will still give you an average (meaning slightly dull) driving experience. . You may feel a bit of a change if you went and bought a Honda Civic, a Mazda 2 or 3 or a Mitsubishi Lancer as all are better drives. All current production Toyotas in 2010 are compacts, small sedans, sedans, large sedans, station wagons, MPVs, SUVs but no coupes, really sporting sedans, grand tourers or sporty cars in general. You see, in their quest to be number one Toyota stopped producing any flagship vehicles or coupes. There are currently no Trueno, Sprinter, Levin, Celica, Supra or even an MRS (MR2) in their lineup. Toyota in 2010 are totally concentrated on making and selling dull shopping trolleys that are inoffensive and only somewhat decent to drive and lack a certain sort of sparkle. A serious lack of character. Can anyone out there tell me of a current Toyota that had a great sounding engine since the Toyota Supra of the 1990s? Can anyone also tell me of a current Toyota in the forefront of car design like the Toyota Altezza (actually it was supposedly a Lexus, I know) with its crystal like rear lights and chronograph watch like instrument gauges? The only decent car in their current catalog of cars is the Mark X, which is still conservative in design even if it is rear wheel driven, therefore slightly sporting in nature. But it isn't an all round sports sedan that I would want to buy. I believe that Toyota would need to rediscover their soul or spirit and start making cars that are slightly wilder in terms of performance, looks and character as well as regaining their supposedly bulletproof build quality. Maybe they should not keep their best designs for Lexus and send some over to their budget models. But whatever the excuse Toyota wants us to believe the fact is that choosing to become number one has dulled their senses, including that all important sense of quality in their cars. Going too fast too soon is a fault already admitted by Toyota. Therefore the lesson that could be learned is that aiming for number one isn't that good a target if you forget the fundamentals that brought you to where you are right now. I have to now state that in life, quantity isn't as good as aiming for quality. -the car that may bring back the sporting spirit in Toyota. IF they produce it. I hope Toyota rediscovers this all important fact and remember building cars that are like the ones they built in the early 1990s and then start creating cars for actual driving instead of just transport. Maybe with the Toyota-Subaru AE86 'replacement' things will get better. But I believe that after this recall debacle, it will take a longer time for it to enter production. We shall wait and see, but in the meantime, I am not losing any sleep over this Toyota issue. - A man walks into a Toyota showroom with some pictures. "Hello, can I buy this?" "No, we don't produce it anymore. " - The man continues. " What about this?" " I'm sorry again, We've stopped producing that too." - The salesman then says " However, can I interest you in this? It has good mileage, 4 doors and a roof."
  6. - a Peugeot 107 The Toyota recall debacle over its faulty accelerator pedal has spread its wings. We now find out that thousands of Peugeot 107 and Citroen C1 are being recalled. According to sources, up to a hundred thousand units in total could be affected. The reason for this is that both models are based on a Toyota. The Toyota Aygo. - Citroen C1 - Toyota Aygo Amazing what all of this platform sharing technology has gotten car manufacturers into. While platform sharing saves cost, allowing two or three different manufacturers to produce their own variants of the same car, we now know that defects may be shared due to parts sharing. All three cars are manufactured in Czechoslovakia (most probably for Europe/ left hand drive markets) in the same factory. Toyota is recalling up to 1.8 million cars all over Europe aside from the few million affected over in the United States and China. On another note, Honda would recall close to 650,000 of its Fit/Jazz and City models, including 140,000 in the United States, because of a faulty window switch, after a child died when fire broke out in a car last year. The years affected are the 2007-2008 models of which an overlap of the new and the old Fit/Jazz models took place. In other words, if you bought the last batch of Fit, Jazz or City, your car may be subject to the recall. Unless yours is a grey import Japan manufactured model which according to Honda isn't affected by all this drama. The thing is, to date (10.00am Monday 1st Feb), there have been no official press release on Kah Motors Honda Singapore on its official website. I'd suggest potential 'victims' of this problem contact the nearest Honda service center as soon as it is possible. Imagine a little short circuit causing your Honda to burst into flames. - If you own this Honda, you may want to make a visit to your neighborhood Honda Service Center. It is now time for all of the above car manufacturers to get into damage control mode and really stop the bleeding. Aside from a damaged reputation, an example of the monetary amount that could be lost from this matter, the National Automobile Dealers Association of America estimates that their Toyota dealers could lose up to US$2.5 billion in revenue and another few hundred million in recall fixes. Imagine the stock market losses too.
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