Hot on the heels of the NHTSA’s announcement that they’re investigating 6.2 million GM vehicles for brake failures, GM has announced that they’re going to be fitting every vehicle to roll of their assembly lines with a brake override system. Most recently talked about by Toyota, a brake override system gives priority to the brake pedal in whether to accelerate or decelerate a vehicle. GM calls theirs a “smart pedal” and says they’ll have it in all of their vehicles by 2012. At least someone’s learning from the whole Toyota debacle.
by John Suit
Source: General Motors
2007 Corolla LE
This latest report, from Reuters, suggests that Toyota is having problems with its 2005-2007 Corollas and Matrixes (Matrices?), a total of about 1.2 million vehicles. In a move much different than the way it’s handled its recent recalls, Toyota announced Thursday that it informed U.S. regulators of a potential problem with stalling cars, and that it’s working on a fix for it.
Continue reading ‘Stalling Cars Stumps Toyota’
Published on
March 3, 2010 in
Manufacturer Update.
Tags: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, Avalon, leak, limited service campaign, LSC, oil, RAV4, Toyota.
Toyota Avalon
Last year, Toyota released a “Limited Service Campaign” (LSC) for some of its V6-equipped vehicles. An LSC shouldn’t be confused with a recall, because recalls are for safety issues and the LSCs are for “customer satisfaction,” according to Toyota. This campaign is for a defective oil line for the affected engines. Over time, a rubber portion of the line may degrade, causing oil to leak out, the engine to make odd noises, and the oil pressure light to illuminate on the vehicle’s dashboard.
Continue reading ‘Toyota expands Oil Leak Fix to new models’
So the hearings are going on in Congress, with consumers, senators, congressmen, Akio Toyoda and the NHTSA, among others. Ed Towns, who has spearheaded efforts to drag Toyota into Congress, has said that Toyota withheld documents it was required to turn over to regulators during recalls and investigations throughout the last several years. It hid them by settling in multi-million dollar court cases when the discovery of said documents was likely. On top of that, Toyoda himself said the company will pay to fix the issues. That’s the year’s biggest “duh” moment, if you ask me.
Continue reading ‘PedalGate: Updates from this week’
2010 Saab 9-5
It seems that the “wind down” of Saab will have to be postponed. GM announced on Tuesday that the sale of Saab to Spyker automotive has been completed, and going forward, Spyker will be responsible for all of Saab’s operations. This is good news to the Saab faithful and employees around the world. Although the automaker is a niche player, it will help fund Spyker’s other projects, namely its supercars. No news about who financed the deal, although it was rumored that the Swedish government had its hands in the deal, promising money to Spyker to give it operating capital to continue running Saab.
by John Suit
Source: GM
I know I’ve said it before in the case of Saab, but this time I believe GM – they’re going to wind down the Hummer brand. It seems the sale of Hummer to Chinese company Tengzhong cannot be completed. No word yet on why, but it may have something to do with intellectual property, since the Hummer H2 and H3 share their platforms with current Chevrolet/GMC products. GM says it will honor Hummer warranties and continue to supply parts for vehicles already on the road.
by John Suit
Source: GM
Hot on the heels of the NHTSA’s announcement that they’re investigating 6.2 million GM vehicles for brake failures, GM has announced that they’re going to be fitting every vehicle to roll of their assembly lines with a brake override system. Most recently talked about by Toyota, a brake override system gives priority to the brake pedal in whether to accelerate or decelerate a vehicle. GM calls theirs a “smart pedal” and says they’ll have it in all of their vehicles by 2012. At least someone’s learning from the whole Toyota debacle.
