Toyota reliability and recalls

Periodically, a number of subscribers claim that Consumer Reports must be biased in favor of Toyota products, and most-recently cite a rash of well-publicized vehicle recalls as “proof” that our mostly very high scores for Toyotas are not accurate. The truth is, we aren’t biased either for or against any brand.

Every vehicle we test is judged against its peers in our road testing. While reliability scores (available to ConsumerReports.org subscribers) from our subscriber surveys serve as one of the criteria for a CR Recommendation, the scores aren’t counted in our overall performance Ratings. Derived from the Annual Questionnaire of our approximately 6 million magazine and Web site subscribers, CR's reliability Ratings represent the subscriber-reported experiences on those cars they themselves own.

Toyota does seem to have had more than its share of recalls lately. In July, Toyota recalled more than 350,000 Highlander and Lexus RX SUVs made between 2004 and 2006. In May, some 170,000 ‘04-’06 Priuses were recalled. Last year, 345,000 ’04-’05 Sienna minivans were recalled. Those are big numbers, but then again, Toyota is a huge manufacturer with a broad product line. Other large manufacturers, such as Ford and GM, have historically had far worse recall numbers than Toyota.

Recalls may not affect our reliability scores because a serious problem crops up too rarely to tip the balance in our reliability survey. A few years ago, we heard from readers and read on forums about a sludge problem with Toyota’s 3.0-liter V6. The people who experienced it were rightly ticked off about it, but that particular grievance didn’t show up often enough in our subscriber survey to hurt the overall score, especially when other components of that model had very few problems. Another Toyota issue, with the 2003 4Runner’s 4.0-liter V6, did show up when it was new, and we noted it in our various mentions of that SUV.

We have certainly noted--and duly reported in our annual April story on Reliability trends that many new cars, Toyotas among them, tend to have some problems in their first year of production. What distinguishes the leading Japanese brands--Honda, Toyota, and Subaru--is that those manufacturers tend to fix those problems fairly quickly.

--Gordon Hard