The first complaint that came in about the issue that caused 7.43 million Toyota vehicles to be recently recalled worldwide back in 2008. At that time an American supplier, Tram Inc., and its Japanese parent company Tokai Rika Co were blamed. The complaint reported a strange smell and no cause for the failure was pinpointed. This case was dropped, but similar reports have come up over the years, including several in 2010 that actually report smoke coming from the faulty window switches. At that time a fully fledged investigation ensued, but it still took two years for the investigation to lead to the current recall.
Of course everyone wants to know why on earth it would take this long for an issue with a fire risk to lead to a recall. Toyota’s answer is that is how long it took them to figure out why the switches were faulty so that they could begin fixing the issue.
“We are not proud of recalls. But there is nothing wrong with recalls per se. Hiding anything would be the problem,” Shigeru Hayakawa, a senior executive, told the AP Thursday in Tokyo. “We are dealing with problems more expediently.”
Toyota spokesman Joichi Tachikawa adds, “We were trying to identify the reason. We can’t announce it until we really identify what’s going on and determine the root cause.”
Whatever the reason, the problems are being corrected and Toyota drivers, around 2.5 million of them in America will be able to have their cars fixed now. These repairs will be done free of charge and depending on dealer’s schedule, shouldn’t take much than an hour. We hope that measures are taken to tighten up quality control on issues so they no longer take so many years to address.
Source Auto News