Fire risk exposed in Toyota Avalon - lapdog NHTSA remains silent

Jessie Powell, one of Toyota's many outraged customers, has been blogging about her ongoing nightmare - she's now suing Toyota - that began after she bought a Prius. Jessie Powell's journey - like mine - opened her eyes to "the rest of the story" when it comes to mistreating customers the "Toyota Way."

Jessie has picketed in front of Toyota dealerships wearing a lemon costume, and does an excellent job of exposing various issues associated with the Coverup King. She has produced a wonderful blog post about the fire risk that's now been exposed in 2011-2012 Toyota Avalons, and underscores the fact that NHTSA - the auto industry's little lapdog - has not seen fit to warn the public. Complete with historical perspective and hard-hitting graphics, Jessie's post is wunna those must reads:

http://jessiepowell.blogspot.com/2015/01/reminders-of-pintos-exploding-gas-tank.html

Longtime customer who got EDR readout fed up with Toyota

“'There are five Toyotas in my family. We’ve been loyal Toyota people,' Mr. Ruginis said. 'Now I plan to replace all five cars.'"

There'll be no more Toyotas for Bob Ruginis, the guy who lucked out and managed to get his hands on data that confirms his wife's account of what happened when her Corolla sped out of control. In a late breaking interview with local news reporter Patrick Luce, Ruginis discusses his disillusionment with Toyota, and the predicament he's now in, still making payments on a vehicle he doesn't feel safe driving and has moral reservations about selling to anyone else.

Coverup King Toyota has a way of abandoning customers. Ask Jessie Powell. She's in a similar predicament with her Prius. It too sets on a dealership lot as Jessie struggles through a lawsuit against now-admitted-crook Toyota. Jessie has picketed her dealership in a lemon costume, she blogs about her experiences, and she has a Facebook page titled "Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon".

Caveat emptor.

Another big recall. Blogger targets Akio.

Apparently, Toyota is tryin' to get in a few more big recalls before 2013 runs out. The latest recall (fifth biggie for the year, second recall in the past week) involves a whopping 885,000 units, featuring - of all things - spiders tampering with air bag deployment. Call this their "Halloween recall," bringing the total number of recalled units to six million for 2013. According to Toyota (I won't belabor that one), the nasty little critters can even play havoc with the steering. Toyota is "aware" of multiple instances of air bag, etc. malfunctions, resulting in two "minor" injuries.

Don't blame it all on spiders, jus' some of it, sez the Recall King. Now that's good advice. An Omaha woman has just been awarded $6.2 million in her airbag lawsuit dating back to a Lexus crash in 2007. The jury deliberated all of four and a half hours to conclude that not only was the airbag defective, but "the car did not 'conform' to the generally recognized and prevailing state of the art in the industry at the time the 2004 Lexus ES 330 was first sold by Toyota.”

Spiders? Hmm... Reminds me of all those MR2 "Spyders" mysteriously plagued by suddenly disintegratin' engines. Yessir, the 'ol Recall King definitely has a bug problem. Great material for another story in Design News' "Made by Monkeys" section.

Meanwhile, one of Toyota's many irrate customers has created a blog - and a Facebook page - titled "Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon." Her 10/18/2013 blog post, "Dear Mr. Akio Toyoda:" calls out none other than the Godfather - er I mean the Prince - himself. Reminds me of a post I made several years ago.

Keep these 2013 recalls - failing engines, brakes, airbags, etc. ad nauseum - goin', Toyota. 'Specially those recalls of recalls when the initial recall failed to fix the recall problem. Keep it up. Ya might be able to set another record.