Will you buy another Toyota?

Seeing how the defects in Toyotas in the US have contributed to more than 50 deaths due to the sudden and uncontrollable acceleration, and Toyota intentionally ignoring the defect even though they knew of it, I myself and my friends have decided that we are not going to buy another Toyota.
I am very happy that I bought a Navara instead of the overpriced Hilux.
Do owners on here share the same views about buying Toyotas?

I have never owned a Toyota and don't ever intend doing so.

skyline_man said:

Seeing how the defects in Toyotas in the US have contributed to more than 50 deaths due to the sudden and uncontrollable acceleration, and Toyota intentionally ignoring the defect even though they knew of it, I myself and my friends have decided that we are not going to buy another Toyota.

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I wouldn't buy an American Toyota. Australian Toyotas are, for the most part, completely different. Different suppliers, and different management.

In the local news over there at the height of the recall saga, Nissan and Honda (I think it was Honda... Another Jap anyway) also took the opportunity to do their laundry under Toyota's umbrella during the media shitstorm. They both announced safety related recalls. Not trying to make a real point, just interesting how they managed to wait all that time till Toyota was hogging all the bad publicity to drop theirs.

Maybe if Toyota ever considered dropping their pricing I'd go there. Charging 15% more just because of the Toyota name is ridiculous. Throughout the Global Confidence Crisis TMCA held their pricing steady, and as a result sales suffered, as did the company.

no problem with buying a toyota.
some of those incidents have been proven to be bogus. i suspect a lot of them is due to incompetent drivers anyway.

every manufacture gets these sorts of problems. the infamous ford pinto didn't stop people buying fords. the main thing is that toyota is fixing the problems not hiding from them like nissan has done with the navara/terrano/patrol motors blowing up sagas.

I would not buy a Toyota personally. Not really because of the safty recalls although the way they have gone about that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I would not buy one as I have a Camry for a work car and having driven a few other Toyotas recently they all seem to share the same basic driving position defects (For someone my size and shape anyway) and I find them bloody uncomfortable to sit in.

Added to that, the suspension tune in the Camry is abysmal (05 model although having recently gone somewhere in a workmates late 09 model it seems the same) The springing and sway bars are soft and it has oddles of high speed damping to rein in the body. It manages a triple whammy, it is floaty over long undulations, uncomfortable and harsh over sharper bumps and it handles exactly like you would expect an undersprung large front drive sedan to do. If the Prius is set up the same way then I can understand why they have braking problems. I regularly drive a road where I have to brake creatively for a corner, I have to either brake early and moderatly hard, then get off the brakes as I go over a join in the bitumen and then get back on the brakes, or brake much later and quite hard after the join. The bitumen falls away on the join by about half an inch and if you go over it braking moderately then the silly amount of rebound damping combined with soft springs mean that the front tyres don't follow the surface and you get a moment with no front grip and a big buzz of anti lock brakes and virtually ALL braking disappears for a moment while it puts its feet back on the ground.

And that is without going into the mental and unpredictable auto box, the cruise control that regularly refuses to resume so you have to drive back up to your set speed and set it again instead (It also has a delay of about half a second after you back off the throttle before anything happens so you hit resume, take your foot off and think it has resumed, only for the car to die in the bum a moment later, it would still be annoying but at least if there was a light on the dash to show that the cruise was active instead of just switched on you would know about it without having to just take your foot off and wait to see what happens) AND it flares by up to about 15kmh over crests, and if you cancel it as you get near the top to prevent that it is a good half a second before anything happens at all and then it gently rolls the throttle off instead of dumping it. It is very disconcerting to be powering up a hill after you have canceled the cruise! And it has lots of bump steer so it is constantly tugging at the wheel in your fingers on anything but a billiard table smooth road and will not go in a straight line.

All in all an uncomfortable, frustrating, tiring bugger of a car. Oh, and the handbrake is on the wrong side of the console and tilted markedly towards the passengers side so if you have a passenger you practically have to elbow them in the ribs to put the handbrake on or off. That is without even talking about the styling which would be described as boring if you feel charitable.

I would not buy it with someone else's money.

We have a Rav4 and love it. Would get another in a heartbeat.

I'm a big fan of Toyota's. Would buy a 70 series tomorrow if I had a spare $70K.

Every manufacturer has at one time or another had recalls and most have ignored them for as long as possible before issuing the recall. Ford have been having problems with Territory's for a few years now yet it's only recently they've done a recall and it's not a recall to solve all the problems people are suffering. It doesn't however mean every Ford is having the same problem and people should avoid Ford.

If the way Toyota in the US have or haven't handled this current situation doesn't sit well with you it's fair enough to not want to buy them but on a performance level we've had a Prado and or a Hilux (depending on the day) traipsing the paddock on the same paths my Nav has and towing the same tandem trailer when mine wasn't and they both preform equally as well in stock standard set ups. If the cost was closer when I was buying I'd have definitely considered the Hilux and may do again come trade in time if the prices are closer

I wouldn't choose a Toyota as there redicously overpriced. I have driven a mates Prado which is a nice car but that would be the only Toyota I would consider buying.

Dave.

Dave said:

I wouldn't choose a Toyota as there redicously overpriced.

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The sad thing is that if you based your choice purely on that you'd never buy a new car, all cars are ridiculously over priced just some more so than others. But then price is governed by demand, if we didn't buy new cars then the prices would drop so in many ways we are all fools.

KraftyPg said:

if we didn't buy new cars then the prices would drop

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Well I'm doing my bit...

Pro-Nav2.7TDi said:

Well I'm doing my bit...

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And typical just like all my teachers used to say I'm letting the team down. Obviously I listened to them all those years ago.

As some of you might recall, we were actually looking at the Sahara model Cruiser before getting the Navara. The reason for change was the desire to go to a 5th wheeler. It means I'm driving a ute from now on and every other type of vehicle will be passed over.

And when it comes to utes, I only have 4 to choose from that actually have sufficient towing capacity to pull the 5th wheeler: Navara, Ford Ranger (not Courier), Holden Colorado (not Rodeo) and the Isuzu D-Max (I believe this might also haul 3T).

Out of those, I have driven a Holden and loved my Commodore (being an exceptionally well maintained car it never gave me much trouble at all) but the feature list in the Colorado stopped well short of the Navara.

I have been in and around Fords for many years and would never buy something that was designed to rust so quickly ever again, especially after seeing a friend's Falcon wagon, 2 weeks out of the dealer showroom (brand new) with rust around the tailgate hinges so bad that they had to cut the entire roof off and replace it. Ford's doors feel light and insubstantial, the engines are rough.

So for me, Toyota doesn't enter into the equation at all. Would I buy a small Toyota as a city runabout? Not unless I had a death wish. They are more than welcome to cull the rest of the population out, but they'll not get me in one of them.

We have a 5 year old Camry, been a great reliable car, cannot fault it. We've had it since new so we know it's history and how it's been driven.

Would buy another without a problem.

tweak'e said:

no problem with buying a toyota.
some of those incidents have been proven to be bogus. i suspect a lot of them is due to incompetent drivers anyway.

every manufacture gets these sorts of problems. the infamous ford pinto didn't stop people buying fords. the main thing is that toyota is fixing the problems not hiding from them like nissan has done with the navara/terrano/patrol motors blowing up sagas.

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Having a defect is not the issue here. Like you said, every manufacturer has problems. The issue is that the defect was related to safety (accelerator pedal getting stuck/ car suddenly accelerating), and Toyota knew about it a long time ago but did nothing to fix the problem.

The issue is Toyota's unethical business practice when it comes to safety.

skyline_man said:

Having a defect is not the issue here. Like you said, every manufacturer has problems. The issue is that the defect was related to safety (accelerator pedal getting stuck/ car suddenly accelerating), and Toyota knew about it a long time ago but did nothing to fix the problem.

The issue is Toyota's unethical business practice when it comes to safety.

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I'm not sure there would be ANY manufacturers that would put their hand up and admit a fault in circumstances like these. The costs to recall would be enormous, and then the compensation to family's would be even greater.

Toyota will plead their ignorance of this for as long as they possibly can. (As would I, I reckon!)

I agree with Matt, no manufacturer will admit fault until they are either forced to or ordered too, it might be unethical but it's the way business operates. As Matt says costs would be a huge factor in that decision as well as public opinion.

18 months ago LG had a recall on a certain brand of dishwasher because one part was known to get hot and cause fires. The problem had existed since they were built in 01 but the recall didn't happen until 08. After the recall was announced the recall number got taken off line due to the amount of calls, those who did register to get theirs fixed had to wait up to 2 months for LG to get their local authorised repairer to look at it, then for those who weren't at the head of the queue there was a wait on the part itself. Sure some may not consider that as bad as letting cars go out on the road in a supposedly unsafe state but for anyone who had a house fire because of a faulty dishwasher I'm betting they think it was a safety issue.

Such standards from LG haven't stopped me buying their stuff either, I don't really agree with the entire handling of the situation and maybe I was lucky my dishwasher doesn't get used all that often but I also know that had it been a different brand it would have been handled in much the same way.