Sorting out the mechanics of the Toyota recall
PORTLAND, Ore. - As Toyota ramps up its repairs for thousands of recalled cars, local car dealers ask Toyota owners for their patience as they work to repair cars as fast as possible.
The fixes will take weeks and local car dealers say that unless car owners are experiencing problems with their cars, they should wait to receive their recall notice before booking a service appointment.
“There just aren’t enough dealers and enough parts and enough people to get it done all at once, so it really makes sense to do it in an orderly fashion unless you think your car has some of the symptoms,” says Russ Humbertson of Beaverton Toyota.
Dealers say if drivers feel their gas pedal is sticking, they will fit customers in immediately, but they still prefer appointments.
“We do want customers who have any concern about their car to call us,” says Jerry Jerome, also of Beaverton Toyota. “We’ll get them in as quickly as possible. Appointments are preferable simply for us to manage the schedule. If every customer came in we just couldn’t accommodate them. So it would help us help them.”
Additionally, not all the parts for some of the cars have arrived at dealerships.
Car dealers say once a customer’s car is in the shop, owners should expect the repair to take 2 ½ hours and will be free, but Jerome says as they’ll get faster overtime making the repairs.
“As time goes on and we get very proficient at it, I believe we’ll get that down to, I’ll say an hour and a half wait time for the customer,” he says.
Toyota says the problems don’t start immediately but develop over time with plenty of warning, and the cars are safe to drive until it’s their turn to be fixed.
Meanwhile, more bad news developed Thursday for Toyota. A major Japanese newspaper reports that Toyota will recall 270,000 Prius hybrid vehicles both in the United States and Japan because of problems with their brakes.
The flaw requires a software programming change to fix it.
And the company says it is investigating possible brake problems with the Lexus hybrid in Japan and the United States.
For more information on the recall:
The Associated Press contributed to this report.