So why is it that many hundreds of thousands of Toyota cars in all the other countries around the world have never had an acceleration problem? Could it be that those countries don’t have governments that own a competing auto company? This stinks to high heaven.
A friend of mine wrecked her Toyota a couple of days ago. The accelerator stuck and she said she could not get the car in neutral. It seems odd that this has popped up all of a sudden, but the problem is real.
I’ve owned one Toyota pickup, and was not impressed. I’ve also talked to a few Toyota dealers, and all of them tried the standard flim-flam stuff some car dealers will pull on the unsuspecting. These include adding scotch guarding and underbody rustproofing before putting the vehicles on the lot (and charging extra); installing after-market A/Cs and cruise controls and not telling the customer they’re aftermarket and therefore not covered by Toyota under warranty (and are also generally of inferior workmanship); etching the VIN # into the window glass and charging extra for it; and the classic doubling the sales tax scam. In Texas, sales tax on autos is only paid on the difference between the trade-in and the new car price, so if your trade-in is worth $10,000 and the new car sells for $20,000, you only pay tax on $10,000. One of them tried to charge sales tax on the entire vehicle price and pocket the difference. A lot of dealers try these scams, but I ran into some or all of them at every Toyota dealership I checked out.
Two of my friends traded in their Chevy pickups and got Toyotas. Both raved about them for about six months. One sold the Toyota after about a year and bought another Chevy. The other one has had consistent problems and keeps saying he wishes someone would steal it. In all fairness to Toyota, that one had an aftermarket turbocharger put on it, and I think that fubared the electronics.