Honda and Toyota, two of the most trusted carmakers in the world for efficient and reliable cars, have undertaken massive recalls to fix problems in hundreds of thousands of cars. Toyota’s problem began with faulty accelerator pedals and then grew to brakes on the Prius. Honda’s difficulty stems from airbags on models as far back as 2001 with faulty inflators. The move comes not fast enough for some, as problems have been noted for almost a year on some models of Toyota cars and Congress wants answers from the world’s top car maker according to Reuters.
My wife and I love our 2008 Toyota Camry, so when we heard of possible trouble with ours we had it looked at right away. The dealer was nice and listened to our concerns and said it was a problem with the floor mat. We had taken ours out completely once we heard there may be problems with the pedal catching on the side of the mat back in early October of 2009
Still, we had it looked over for possible problems two months ago and the dealer fixed the problem by taking off part of the accelerator pedal. It took a little getting used to with the new pedal, but by now the problem is solved from that end.
Our daily lives weren’t impacted too much as we didn’t notice any problems with the car and we didn’t do much highway driving. Plus my wife and I don’t accelerate very fast anyway because we have two kids. Still, to be cautious, I removed the floor mat once we saw the news that there may be a problem. We didn’t officially get a letter, and we may not since we already have the problem fixed.
We never had any problems with our car, fortunately, but our dealer was at least understanding about it. Perhaps it was the bad economy and he wanted to keep our business for later or just because Toyota has standards above other carmakers. These standards are one reason why we bought a car from Toyota.
Will we buy more Toyota autos in the future? Yes, probably, since every carmaker in the world goes through these growing pains. Ford had the SUV rollovers that had unfortunate deaths and tire explosions. No high profile deaths have come in the wake of the recalls that we know of at this time.
We lost our faith in American cars when my wife and I first went car shopping and test drove both new and used cars. We realized that foreign cars were in better shape the more miles that got put on them versus American cars. For longevity and resale value, we decided to stick with Toyota for about fifteen years now.We still don’t think American cars stack up yet, as newer models with lower gas mileage than before are new and untested. Toyota and Honda at least have years of engineering behind them that have proven themselves to be fuel efficient and good rides.
