Business News and Information

Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) plans to recall nearly 533,000 Sequoia SUVS and Tundra pickup trucks after six injuries and 11 accidents were reported due to a defect that made the vehicles difficult to steer.

The recall will affect certain 2004 to 2007 model year Sequoias and 2004 to 2006 model year Tundras, both originating at Toyota's Indiana plant.

General Motors Corp. (GM) has been feeling Toyota's breath hot and heavy on the back of their necks as they make head way on becoming the world's largest auto maker. With this in mind, Toyota is making quality issues their number one priority due to a rise in vehicle recalls and the increased scrutiny from the Japanese media over quality issues, according to this Money.CNN.com article.

This isn't the first recall with Toyota having recalled more than a million vehicles in Japan and 760,000 units in the United States last year. Has that hurt sales? Not even. Toyota increased sales last year by 9 percent, largely attributed to a 13 percent increase in sales here in the United States.

In 2005 Toyota recalled 750,000 Tacoma's and 4Runners as well as the Tundra and Sequoia for a similar problem with the steering. It included problems with the front suspension and ball joint and that is exactly the problem this time around. Toyota is fixing the problem for free but it is quite concerning that the problem seems to keep repeating itself.

You can access this web site, InternetAutoGuide.com, for a listing of Toyota recalls, defects and problems. Interestingly enough, I tried to find info about the recall on their official web site, www.toyota.com but couldn't find anything about this or similar recalls using the search function and the word recall.