Toyota offers to pay for secondary repair
- Source: Shanghai Daily
- [09:13 December 03 2010]
- Comments
Toyota Motor Corp has told United States dealers it will pay for a secondary repair related to a massive safety recall on its top-selling Camry for sticking accelerator pedals.
In a bulletin sent to its US dealers on Tuesday, Toyota said it would pay to repair a bracket holding the accelerator pedal in place on the Camry sedan and the more expensive Avalon if that part is damaged while the recall work is being done.
Toyota's notice to dealers represents the latest complication in a high-profile safety recall that was ordered by US safety regulators in January.
That recall of about 2.3 million vehicles in the US, including the Camry and the Avalon, took aim at the risk that accelerator pedals could become stuck in place or trap floormats.
In some cases, repair technicians at Toyota dealerships inadvertently stripped bolts on the accelerator bracket in the Camry and Avalon when performing the recall, Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said.
Toyota's service bulletin on how to repair the accelerator bracket in such a case under warranty was not immediately made public. A copy was obtained by Reuters.
Toyota said it would pay for dealerships to perform a repair expected to take about 40 minutes if the initial recall damaged the bracket.
Lyons said the secondary damage had been "extremely rare on a handful of vehicles."
Lyons said no Toyota owners had driven away with loose bolts on the accelerator after having the recall repair completed. "It's nothing the consumer would ever experience," he said.
In April, Toyota agreed to pay a record US$16.4 million fine for delaying the recall of the defective accelerator pedals in the US market.
By November 22, Toyota had repaired about 1.9 million vehicles in the US market for the sticky pedal problem, which was more than 80 percent of the vehicles recalled, Lyons said.
Only the Camry and the Avalon are at risk for a repair damaging the bolts on the accelerator bracket assembly because the other vehicles recalled use a different system.
Lyons said Toyota's own data showed that customers were very satisfied with the fixes to the accelerator under the recall.
