Attention owners of Toyota 2011 Tundras: Some of the trucks have a potentially dangerous glitch. These 2011 Tundras have a rear drive shaft that can break .

Toyota Motor Sales USA estimates that 0.5 percent of its 2011 Tundras have the defect.

The company is recalling 51,000 models. Owners can expect a recall letter in the mail in the next several weeks.
So what’s up with Toyota?

In the last year, the company has had to recall 14 million Toyotas to fix defects. Some were deadly. Faulty floor mats and sticky gas pedals are blamed for fatal accidents caused by cars that accelerated suddenly, reaching high rates of speed as they careened off the road with disastrous results. Another Toyota recall involved a glitch in braking software. Toyota is facing dozens of lawsuits in the United States filed on behalf of victims who were injured or killed in its  vehicles.

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What is going on at Toyota?

In 2008, the Japanese auto maker became the world’s largest auto manufacturer, knocking General Motors out of the top slot after 77 years. Toyota’s sales last year amounted to 8.418 million vehicles worldwide. Clearly,car buyers trusted the brand. Now Toyota appears to be headed for a record as the auto manufacturer with the most recalls in history.

This week, it recalled nearly 1.7 million cars worldwide. Add up its recalls since 2009 and they total nearly 16 million cars. What happened? (more…)

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A federal judge in California has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Toyota lawsuits over defective cars which were flawed by such problems as sudden acceleration and faulty braking.

In U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, Toyota had moved to dismiss key causes of action in 51 lawsuits pending against it. But Judge James V. Selna issued a preliminary opinion to deny this. Instead, lawsuits can proceed against Toyota for negligence, design defects, failure to warn and fraudulent concealment.

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After Toyota recalled almost 10 million cars in recent months, you’d think that would have about covered the Japan-based automaker’s defective products. But no. This week Toyota recalled another 1.5 million vehicles, and this time the Toyota recall involved leaking brake fluid and bad fuel pumps.

At this rate, Toyota will be recalling more cars than it continues to sell. It seems like whenever Toyota recalls cars over safety concerns, a slew of new Toyota TV ads run, urging people to buy the cars despite all the bad news. And people keep on buying, perhaps expecting a better deal due to the bad publicity and perhaps guessing the odds are in their favor.

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In the SOS over Toyota stuck accelerators causing death to innocent Americans, a new element is entering the sad and disturbing picture: EMI. That stands for electromagnetic interference, which is what some say is causing the fatal bursts of sustained acceleration.

In theory, EMI can be caused internally by components of a car’s own systems, or via cell phones or airport radar. EMI essentially disrupts or alters the electronic commands that a car should be receiving from its internal systems in order to brake, accelerate or perform other driving tasks.

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The negligence of Toyota toward innocent American consumers seems to know no end. The latest sign of Toyota putting profits over public safety is found in an internal Toyota document from July 6, 2009, in which a company executive bragged that it was saving $100 million by negotiating a limited recall for Lexus ES and Toyota Camry vehicles for accelerator malfunctions.

That limited recall may have saved Toyota millions at the time, but Toyota’s failure to address the problem fully led to more stuck accelerator car crash accidents and what’s now become the largest recall in its history: more than 8 million vehicles.

The month after the Toyota executive boasted about saving money on the limited recall, a family of four riding in a Lexus in California was killed when its gas pedal stuck to a floor mat. It wasn’t until November of 2009 that Toyota issued a full recall to fix the gas pedals of its defective products.

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