I was with my older sister at the Toyota dealer yesterday. She was about to sign the final papers to drive away in her new RAV4 when the top manager of the dealer came in with the memo he just received from Toyota about the newest recall and suspension of sales. After a call from them today, as told by my sister, since her RAV4 was not made at a Japanese plant (her's is the base RAV4) the car is somehow cleared for sale. I'm not sure if it never had a problem or if the fix was easy. I'll try to find out today when we go to pick up the car.
There was some confusion, and it seems that her car was made in Japan, and it is ok. The accelerator modules used on cars built in the American plant were the ones with issues. Even then, they cannot reproduce the problems. She was able to get her car today. She traded in her '01 Beetle for it.
Toyota's U.S. dealer council accused GM of using "taxpayer dollars to fund… a nationwide predatory adver*tising campaign.” Its leader, Paul Atkinson, had this to say about it: “It is outrageous that GM is using our taxpayer dollars against us, making me and oth*er Toyota dealers pay to un*dermine our own businesses.” And that's our AE Quote of the Week but, oh really, Atkinson? This after you and your cronies have wallowed in profits for years that were blatantly fueled by Japan Inc.'s predatory money manipulation policies, which gave you and your fellow Toyota dealers advantages of hundreds and even thousands of dollars per vehicle in this market over the U.S. automakers before your vehicles even hit the ground? In case you haven't noticed, Atkinson, this is war. And if GM wants to mess your stuff up in the market while you're down, well, pal, that's just the cost of doing business in the big city right now. In other words: Boo. Hoo.