Poorly Made

Last Wednesday, Toyota Motor Corp., announced that the automaker will recall their optional “all weather” floor mats in their 55,000 Lexus ES 350 and Toyota Camry sedans. The recall was due to the potential of the mat to cause a crash as it interferes with the gas pedal.

If the mat is not properly attached, it could move forward and shut in the gas pedal and the vehicle will be unstoppable. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an advisory regarding the floor mats to respond to the danger it poses to the American motorists.

A similar move was done by Nissan Motors. The automaker stated that they are going to issue recalls for their 420,000 sport utility vehicles with tubes where motorists pump gas which is at risk for corrosion.

Nissan’s recall includes their 1997-2001 models of the Pathfinder and Infiniti QX4 SUVs. Out of the 420,000 vehicles, 370,000 had already been sold and are presently registered in 22 “cold weather” states and in the District of Columbia. 45,000 of the vehicles are in Canada.

For Toyota’s recall, the Avalon and the Prius are not included. But the advisory issued by the NHTSA also advised the owners of these two model vehicles to check their heavy-duty rubber floor mats if it is properly installed. According to Rae Tyson, they issued the advisory “because we believe potentially it is a very serious safety issue.”

According to Bill Kwong, spokesman for Toyota, the company did not receive complaints for the Avalon and the Prius. He also said that the floor mats built to collect rain water, mud, and snow were installed under the original carpet mats and locked up against the accelerator.

To consider that the floor of a vehicle only has one hook that can secure on mat at a time.

22 complaints have been made regarding the issue as reported by the automaker. But they have not learned any injury connected to the matter said Kwong. The Japanese automaker plans to solve this problem by notifying the owners of the vehicles under recall in early October and to expect availability of replacement mats in dealerships by late November.

As an advice, Toyota said that the owners should check their floor mats on a regular basis if it is properly installed. The company added in a statement, “Under no circumstances should more than one floor mat ever be used in the driver’s seating position.”

According to Nissan, their recall was due to inefficiency of coating bracket by the fuel filler tube assembly mounted in their SUVs. For the “cold weather” states, significantly during the winter, a mixture of snow, water and salt could eventually lead to its corrosion on the metal tube resulting to fluid leaks.

Fred Standish, spokesman for Nissan said that they have not been notified of fires or any injuries connected to the issue. The company plans to replace the fuel tube assembly with a new and improved one though its dealers. The company will notify the owners about the availability of this service in late November.

The recall covers the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Earlier this month, Honda (makes Honda cold air intake) also issued recalls for their 180,000 2006-2007 models of their Civic to fix a wheel-bearing seal that can leak and cause a wheel to fall off from the vehicle.