Silky: Toyota owners have nothing to fear

Toyota motorcar owners here have nothing to fear, with the current automobile recall taking place around the world.

Bertille ‘Silky’ Dasilva, proprietor of The Star Garage, agent for Toyota vehicles here, told Searchlight in an exclusive interview that the recall on some late model cars does not impact the region.{{more}}

“I got a letter from them (Toyota head office) and it says that ‘no vehicles in your market is affected by this issue’.”

Da Silva indicated that if there was need for concern, the world’s top selling vehicle manufacturer would have made it known.

“They don’t make jokes. They know where every vehicle they make is. Any part of the world.”

Toyota’s latest woes began about four weeks ago, when the 2.3 million vehicles were recalled because of the possibility of the accelerator pedal (gas pedal) sticking.

Weeks earlier, the company had issues with over two million vehicles with faulty floor mats.

And just this week, Toyota recalled approximately 311,000 of its 2010 Prius hybrids around the world to fix the brakes.

It is Toyota’s third major recall in recent times, but at least on this one the numbers are small, compared with the 8 million cars under recall around the world.

Regarding the sticking accelerator pedal, DaSilva highlighted possible solutions if this happens with a driver in a Toyota, or any other vehicle for that matter.

“In a case like that the person can switch off the engine,” DaSilva suggested.

“Or they can take the car out of drive and put it in neutral. The engine will just ‘rev’ but there will be no connection and it will not speed forward or backward.”

He suggested that while putting the vehicle in neutral, one should apply brake pressure or use the hand brake, or both.