Car recalls usually involve non-life-threatening issues like windshield wipers and broken navigation systems. Sometimes, they are much worse. The most famous of the latter category is the Takata airbag recall that affected 30 million cars across 20 brands. These were installed in cars built from 2001 to 2019. Several people died when the faulty airbags deployed
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Toyota posted one of its rare recalls due to an extremely dangerous malfunction. Its BZ4X vehicle can lose a wheel while it is being driven. It appears only a few hundred vehicles are involved. However, it is hard to imagine a more terrifying problem. CNN reported that Toyota seemed not to take the problem seriously enough: “Toyota did not know why this was happening, but the automaker said it would investigate and have the problem corrected once engineers understood why the wheels were coming loose.”
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Toyota, in a barely generous gesture, said it would buy back the vehicles (not a full price, it appears) or offer credits that may rise to as much as $5,000.
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Recalls of any size get substantial publicity and can affect consumer confidence of brand safety. That probably undermines brand sales, even if the effect is modest. Wheels falling off a car is likely to be widely covered by the media.
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Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus usually sit at the top of car quality rankings. Perhaps wheels that fall off will not mean these rankings will not decline. For the owners of the BZ4X, though, Toyota’s quality reputation means nothing.
Wheels Could Fall Off Toyota SUV
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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