Toyota dealers cope with a massive recall

Lisa Rizzo is a Catholic school teacher and mother from Ardmore who drives a Toyota Corolla. But today, she sounded like the kind of customer Toyota Motor Sales should fear amid a recall and sales halt so massive it threatens the company's vaunted reputation.

"We had heard good things about Toyota," said Rizzo, so in 2006 she signed a five-year lease on a Corolla. But after Toyota announced an indefinite halt in production and new sales yesterday because of an accelerator-pedal defect, that perception is no longer solid.

"My lease is up in a year," Rizzo said. "I don't know . . . we might look elsewhere."

After a sweeping recall of 2.3 million vehicles, which was announced last week, and now the production and sales shutdown affecting eight models, including the popular Camry, Toyota customers and dealers today scrambled to cope while competitors pounced on the news.

Toyota Motor Corp., the Japanese automaker that coasted through last year's bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler L.L.C. relatively unharmed, is now grappling with its own crisis that, some say, threatens its spot as the U.S. sales leader ahead of Ford and Chevrolet brands.

"We are very concerned about restoring the confidence of our owner body, no doubt about it," said spokesman John Hanson, from the automaker's U.S. base in Torrance, Calif.

But the effect on consumer views of Toyota quality - long a marketing strength - may be hard to control, at least in the short term, said Dave Sargent, vice president of automotive research at J.D. Power & Associates, of Troy, Mich.

"They have been the gold standard, one of the leaders in quality and perception of quality for 20 years now," Sargent said. "This will hurt them, no question."

Toyota has recalled and halted production and sales on various versions of the 2009-10 RAV4, 2009-10 Corolla, 2009-10 Matrix, 2005-10 Avalon, 2007-10 Camry, 2010 Highlander, 2007-10 Tundra, and 2008-10 Sequoia until the company devises a repair to accelerator pedals that, in "rare" instances, may become "sticky" or fail to return to the rest position quickly, Hanson said.

The automaker said drivers should not take the recall to mean they should keep their vehicles in Park.

"Because we have a stop sale does not mean you have to have a stop drive," Hanson said. "If the owner does notice a sticky pedal, if the owner does notice that the pedal returns slower than usual, then we would like that owner to call their nearest Toyota dealer."

At Conicelli Toyota, with locations in Conshohocken and Springfield, Delaware County, calls began coming in soon after Toyota's announcement last night.

"We're dealing with it the best we can," said Dominic Conicelli Jr., vice president of Conicelli Autoplex and chairman of this year's Philadelphia International Auto Show, which opens Saturday.

Area dealers were only beginning to hatch strategies today to deal with the onslaught of customer questions while funneling media queries to U.S. headquarters, per the company's request.

At Ardmore Toyota, a cluster of employees whispered among themselves after fielding a walk-in request for an interview about the recall. One man jotted down a California phone number before handing it over, glum-faced. There would be no comment from the dealer.

Conicelli said that his own people were still sorting things out and that not every new car was on the no-sale list.

"We're actually doing an inventory of what is available for sale now," he said, "and in rough estimates right now, it's about 50 percent of the Camrys we have."

That is because Camrys manufactured in Japan, for instance, do not contain the faulty pedal.

"If your VIN number starts with a J, it's not affected," Hanson said. "If you have a Camry hybrid, you are not affected."

Toyota will do "everything that we can to show our ownership, and also people who are looking to buy a Toyota for the first time, that if they do have a problem with one of our vehicles, that we're going to step up and do the right thing," he said.

Of 2.3 million vehicles in the recall, there have been only 200 complaints to date, and drivers who encounter the "rare" stuck accelerator pedal can deal with it safely if it occurs, said David Champion, senior director of Consumer Reports' Auto Test Division.

"If it does stick, don't panic," Champion said. "Just slip the car into Neutral. By pushing the transmission into Neutral, the engine will rev a very high RPM. It may sound pretty scary, but it's not going to cause any problems. Pull over to the side of the road in a safe place, turn off the engine, and call a tow truck."

General Motors Co. announced today that it would offer incentives through the end of February to Toyota owners affected by the recall to push its Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC models.

Toyota's troubles had similarly buoyed the spirits at a Big Three showroom down the street from Conicelli in Conshohocken: John Kennedy Ford.

How was sales manager Dean Tritel handling the news?

"Great!" he said, letting out a wide smile. Ford Motor Co.'s quality ratings are consistently high these days, he said, but consumers "brainwashed" by Toyota are reluctant to believe even Consumer Reports' claims of Ford quality, he said.

"They'll have to do some damage control, big-time," Tritel said.