Lexus Stop-Sale Action To Lead to New Recall Expectations?

Lexus Stop-Sale Action To Lead to New Recall Expectations?

By Michelle Krebs April 15, 2010

When Toyota Motor Corp. heard of the "don't buy" label Consumer Reports hung on the Lexus GX 460 sport-utility vehicle sold by its upscale division, this time it wasted no time: The company halted sales of the SUV while it sorts out the problem.

But the problem isn't only with the GX 460's reported propensity to fishtail when cornering hard and the driver abruptly closes the throttle (a handling deficiency that Consumer Reports said came up in its routine testing). Toyota's real problem is it can't afford to give the impression one moment is being squandered in evaluating and acting on a safety-related complaint.

Halting sales while investing a report of a safety problem is a drastic step -- one Toyota and all automakers surely would like to avoid whenever reasonable. Many complaints and reports regarding safety-oriented equipment or vehicle behavior might be ill-founded or trivial in nature -- and historically, few have been drastic enough to justify a stop-sale order.

But because of Toyota's recent poor practices -- which in the case of its sticking accelerator pedals culminated in a record $16.375-million fine from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration -- the company seems to be in the place where it now has little choice but to take actions that may be out of proportion with the situation.

The big problem for all other automakers becomes this: Will regulators and customers now expect "stop sale" decisions to become the de facto reaction to reports of safety-related problems or recalls? Will it lead to a slippery slope of nannyish standards in which the recall of a component with a tertiary safety connection -- the possibility of blowing the fuse connected to the windshield-wiper motor, let's say -- is viewed as no less dire than a potentially sticky accelerator pedal?

Toyota temporarily stopped sales (and production) of vehicles with the affected accelerator pedals. Just three months and a world of public-relations hurt later, it is stopping sales of the Lexus GX 460, even though the company said its own testing had not produced the lift-oversteer result that led to Consumer Reports' "don't buy" evaluation.

Toyota is stopping sales of the Lexus GX 460 largely because its safety credibility is at risk and partly because the veracity of its internal safety and quality-control processes is along for the ride -- after all, none of the other SUVs Consumer Reports tests displayed the bad behavior of the Lexus, leading rational observers to believe Toyota's testing standards are not sufficiently robust.

But the more far-reaching impact of Toyota's latest action will be whether it begins a trend in which the auto industry will be held to a new and perhaps unnecessarily rigid standard for dealing with "safety-related" recalls. -- Bill Visnic, Senior Editor

 

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.