Toyota Kirloskar Motors announced yesterday that they are going to recall 44,989 units of Innovas, which incidentally is their most selling car in India as well.
The announcement comes hours after Toyota announced that they are recalling 63.9 lac units worldwide, making it Toyota’s second largest ever recall. The company said that the Innovas are plagued by a faulty spiral cable mounted on the steering wheel which leads to continuous illumination of airbag warning lamp on the instrumentation cluster giving prior indication of the problem to the driver. The bigger issue is the possibility of it leading to the deactivation of airbags and they may not deploy in case of an unfortunate accident.
Nearly 35 lac units are being recalled worldwide with the same problem, built between April 2004 and December 2010. Half of these affected vehicles are believed to have been sold in North America. The affected Innovas in India are from the time period from February 2005 to December 2008.
Other problems in the huge global recall include faulty steering column brackets, windshield wiper motors and engine starters.
Toyota has claimed that so far no untoward incidents have been reported because of these faults. However they remained mum on whether the problems arose because of their own manufacturing fault or by suppliers. They also did not comment anything about the cost involved in these recalls.
The repairs in India are believed to require only an hour of toil. The company is arranging for the necessary replacement parts and once that is done, the affected customers will be contacted by authorised dealers. The customers will obviously not be charged anything for the entire process.
Just a couple of days back there were reports of a possible recall of 1.5 Lac Dzire’s by Maruti Suzuki and now we have Toyota! In case your Innova is diagnosed with the issue, just get it rectified at your nearest dealership. Remember, recalls are not bad! It just shows that the manufacturers are ready to take onus and responsibilities of the faults on their part and make the necessary amends.
