Alexander Parker
SOUTH African Toyota owners would be affected by a global recall of 7.4 million cars, the company said yesterday.
It was unable, however, to confirm the full extent of the recall.
It is likely that several thousand Corolla, Yaris, Auris, RAV4 and Camrys built between 2005 and 2010 are affected.
The problem was related to the lubricant used in the electric window switches "which can degrade over time", Toyota spokesman Leo Kok said.
There had been reports of smoke emanating from the switches but "there have been no fires, no incidents and no injuries as a result of this," he said.
The worst-case scenario would be a little smoke, but "we can't replicate this in our own in-house tests". The recall was purely precautionary.
The pre-emptive recall would see Toyota contacting its customers and having their cars inspected.
"If we find the fault, we'll replace the whole switch," Kok said.
Globally, the company is recalling 1.39 million vehicles across Europe, 2.47 million in the US and 1.4 million in China. Toyota has had a torrid time of late, with the company issuing a recall of 12 million vehicles in 2009, after which it was hauled before US legislators and its boss, Akio Toyoda, offered an apology.
Toyota also faced huge production challenges as a result of the tsunami and earthquake that hit Japan in March last year.
The company has since recovered and is once again the world's largest vehicle manufacturer.
