Toyota has a problem, and it may end up costing them billions of dollars. In May of this year, Toyota announced that it would be recalling over 100,000 of their popular Tundra pick-up trucks and about 3600 LS600 2022 and 2023 SUV’s to replace the engines according to reports in various US publications.
The problem is that their newest twin turbo’d V6 powerplant, the one which replaced the bullet-proof normally aspirated V8, has a reliability issue caused by a manufacturing defect. The problem is debris, mostly large metal shavings, inside of the engine left there by the manufacturing process.
According to Toyota owners, you may get some warning signs such as engine knocking and loss of power and/or inability to start. Not being able to start your car is annoying, but a sudden loss of power on the road could cause accidents and is thus a big safety issue.
Rather than fudge around with it, Toyota has done something absolutely stellar, in my humble opinion, they have decided to replace all the engines in the 102,092-vehicle impacted by the issue for free.
If we assume that the cost of an engine is in the USD10,000 range not including the fitting of it, then the cost to replace all of them will run to more than a billion dollars.
Quite a sizeable amount. But Toyota will reap future dividends from taking such an unusual stance. Once again they will win the trust and respect of their customers and it is hard to put a figure on how much that could be worth to the company in the future.
