How Toyota and General Motors keep drivers of faulty cars waiting

HOW Toyota and General Motors keep drivers of faulty cars waiting.

Illustration by Tom Jellett of a garage mechanic looking under the bonnet of a car and finding a lemon.

EARLIER this month, Renee was driving her 2013 Toyota Rav 4 home from work in the middle of Sydney peak-hour traffic.

Halfway through a roundabout, two alerts came up on the dash before the engine completely shut itself down and wouldn’t start again. The traffic started backing up and abuse started flying.

It was 10 minutes until she could get some help from people to push her car out of the roundabout to the side of the road.

Since February, General Motors has recalled more than 26 million cars worldwide because of faulty ignition switches, which could and often did stop the engine. GM had known about the problem for more than 10 years.

No one in authority from GM, the government or the regulators revealed the problem. It took a small-time US lawyer from Marietta, Georgia, Lance Cooper, to bring GM to its knees. Cooper had been hired by the family of 29-year-old Brooke Melton, who was killed when her Chevy Cobalt lost power and ran into an oncoming car.

Cooper delved through more than 30,000 pages of GM documents from the company, deposed about a dozen of its engineers and gathered assessments of the ignition issue from dealers. According to some of the depositions, reviewed by Bloomberg News, the defect was known to some dealers, engineers and managers since at least 2004. It was clear some at GM knew about the problem from when the ignition switch was designed.

In no way is this an attempt to draw a parallel between what happened to one Toyota and 26 million GM vehicles, but it is clear from my correspondence with Toyota, and from conversations between Renee and senior Toyota service staff, that the issue causing the engine to shut down is known to Toyota. In fact, one of the technicians told Renee “this car is definitely not the only one with oil consumption issues and Toyota are working on a solution”.

Toyota service staff at the dealer and in the company-owned Waterloo facility have been working on Renee’s car since December last year. In an email to me early this year, a Toyota customer service manager wrote that the matter had been “substantially addressed”.

Despite this, in March the Toyota dealer advised Renee that they had identified a factory defect causing the oil consumption issue — to resolve it, they organised to take the vehicle for two weeks in July to remove the engine, and replace the pistons and rings.

Shortly after this, Renee took the car in for its next scheduled service and when picking up the car she told the service staff the car would not start normally. A technician took the car for a test drive. He came back saying that during the service they had damaged the filter and it was leaking diesel. The part needed to come from overseas and they would need to keep the Rav 4 for six weeks. The Toyota dealer had the car for 7½ weeks.

Eventually, after the roundabout breakdown, another Toyota dealer decided the problem was fuel pressure and said the part could take up to eight weeks to turn up. The problem was eventually fixed in a week.

Despite requests, the last response from Toyota was from public relations co-ordinator Elise Butcher two weeks ago. She wrote: “We have referred this matter to our customer assistance department for further investigation. Toyota will respond as soon as possible.”

Last week, Toyota recalled 1.75 million vehicles worldwide over faulty brake installations and fuel component issues. So the question is: Would you let your daughter-in-law get back into her Rav 4?

If you have had safety problems with your Toyota please drop me an email.

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